no date

“Working with a koan can make the world more transparent and alive and at the same time shift your consciousness in small and large ways. It’s a work of art as well as a spiritual method and intended to be useful in your life and contribute to your happiness.”

In meditation whatever arises in the mind or in your life is the gate. The hindrances are the gates; when they appear, it might be an indication that meditation is going well.

“What are the essentials of the meditation path as a basis for this healing — healing of both person and culture?” August 2006.

Spiritual work and the arts can be very near each other. Both of them tell us what life is, how not to lie to ourselves, how to endure and how to love.

Eventually you come to a place where you can’t go on and you can’t go back. You have arrived at the base of cliffs; you can’t scale them, you can’t get around them, and there’s no handy tunnel through them. The Japanese teacher Hakuin called this the Silver Cliffs and Iron Mountains. It’s a daunting place—that’s the point of it. And when you arrive here your life and your journey can become your own.

Right now, as we sit here, we are standing at the edge of a cliff. On every side there is a great drop. Right now, what do you experience standing on the edge of this great cliff? Whatever you experience standing here, that is your life. At the end of your days you’ll say, “This is what I did.” So what do you experience standing on the edge of the cliff?

A monk once asked Master Zhaozhou, “Has a dog the Buddha Nature or not?” Zhaozhou said, “No!”

We have such a passion to know and to be certain but, in practice, much of what we think of as knowledge is just untested thoughts. As the Heart Sutra says, even thoughts are empty, and if we are willing not to know, willing to walk through life without believing every thought that rises, then we’ll find a path out of suffering.