Sit On Your Butt And Breathe

I have recently finished reading A Thousand Paths to Zen by Robert Allen. The following are some of the quotes I find interesting.

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1. To get rid of your passions is not nirvana – to look upon them as no matter of yours, that is nirvana.

2. Zen poet Seiken-Chiju spent twenty years on a pilgrimage only to realize he had not moved an inch.

3. The less there is me, the more there is Zen. The more there is Zen, the more there is me.

4. How many things I can do without! – Socrates

5. When an ordinary man acquires knowledge, he becomes wise. When a wise man attains enlightenment, he becomes ordinary.

6. The master asked, “Who binds you?”
The pupil replied, “No one.”
The master rejoined, “So why do you seek liberation?”

7. “While I was meditating,” said the new student, “I saw a beautiful white bird come down and land on my head.”
“Leaving you with feathers for brain,” observed her teacher.

8. I asked a child, walking with a candle, “Where does the light come from?” Instantly he blew it out. “Tell me where it’s gone and I’ll tell you where it came from.” – Hasan of Basra

9. A Japanese girl called Satsume experienced an awakening while still only in her teens. One day her father found her seated on one of the scriptures meditating and scolded her for her disrespect. “How,” she replied, “does this scripture differ from my butt?”

10. If you want excitement, set fire to your pants. Zen isn’t about excitement.

11. As long as you seek enlightenment you will never see that you already have it.

12. Some people call Zen a ‘Way of Liberation,” which sounds very impressive, but who is to be liberated, and from what?

13. Zen isn’t the answer to all your problems – Zen is all your problems.

14. Even the greatest master never taught one word of Zen.

15. There’s nothing in this world that you can cling to. But how hard it is to let go!

16. Do as much good as you can, but do not be attached to doing good. It is not an aim in itself.

17. Don’t expect to understand Zen like a piece of conventional knowledge. It’s more like when you get the point of a joke.

18. Zen doesn’t make sense. But then life is under no obligation to make sense.

19. Seek a teacher if you wish, but you will only make progress when you realize that your real master stares at you from the mirror every day.

20. Anyone who tries helpfully to explain Zen to you is doing you a grave disservice.

21. Do not avoid life. Zen is not about drinking weak tea in musty parlors.

22. There is a story of a Zen student who cut his arm off to persuade a master that he was sincere enough to become his pupil. Why pay such a price for what is yours already?

23. It’s no good wishing you were someplace else, doing something else. This is where you are, doing what you have to do. Relax. Do it. Everything else is superfluous.

24. A friend asked, “In your Zen where do you go when you die?” There is nowhere to go.

25. Give something a name and you set limits on it. The name Zen is merely a convenience because you need to call it something. But people tend to confuse the name with the real thing and that can only lead to trouble.

26. It’s no good trying to be good, kind, and virtuous unless that is how you feel. The world has enough hypocrites. Let Zen fill you up and morality will take care of itself.

27. If you can’t get it, throw it out. Then you’ll have it.

28. Searching for Zen is like an old man using his spectacles to hunt for his spectacles.

29. There are no rules in Zen except that you keep exploring. If you think you’ve reached your destination you haven’t.

30. When someone makes a silly inconsequential remark and a friend says, “That’s very Zen” – it isn’t.