In the Far Eastern languages we have many different words to describe the varying degrees of reality that a thing, a state of mind or plane of being may have.
Buddhism leads you to the awareness that all things are holy. Everything is holy. The dark has its own light, in other words.
In Buddhism we don't really believe in sin and salvation as Westerners would define them. We believe in the limitless possibilities of the present and of future moments.
What is evil? There is no such thing. In Buddhism we don't recognize evil and therefore we don't give it any power over us.
The days of infinity are endless. Its hours cannot be counted or found on a clock. There is no north, south, east, or west. These are just concepts. Infinity is forever, everywhere all at once. And that's all there is.
Human beings have become so afraid of the unknown, themselves, and each other that they deprive themselves of that innate ecstasy and love of life which comes with a human body, mind and spirit, by hiding behind the empty shell of their ego.
Self discovery doesn't not seek to bring you answers about your personal life or philosophically comfort you about life and death. What it does is bring you into reality as perception itself.
The Buddhist mindset seeks to eliminate the self. That is to say, what we want to experience is life, not self. When there's less self and more life, we're very content, and when there's more self and less life we're quite unhappy.
The dialectical change of mind that occurs in Buddhism is not simply the assimilation of a new philosophical basis or religious basis for viewing and interpreting experience. Rather it is the complete structural revision of that which is.
As long as we remain self-reflective and keep looking at who and what we are, as long as we keep our analysis that way, then there's no freedom. We're just trying clothes on in front of a mirror and admiring them.
The purpose of all our explanations is not to have you understand anything, but for you to snap from the understanding of the intellect to the understanding of pure spirit. All our explanations work backwards.
Buddhism is the study of the way the mind works. One has to be able to hold a large number of relational concepts simultaneously in the mind. It is necessary to grid, to literally unlock realities and dimensions with the power of your mind.
The pathway to enlightenment is beautiful. There are a lot of wonderful things that happen along the way. Win or lose, you just keep going, and it happens eventually.
Beyond learning and unlearning is awareness, and beyond awareness is consciousness, and beyond consciousness is immortality, and beyond immortality is dharma and beyond dharma is nirvana.
Tonight is not the end of the world. This is our hot tip of the evening.
I don't know how much you know about Zen, but you'll know less when I'm done with you.
You may have had countless lives, and many more stretching before you, and what else have you got to do with your time?
Forever is not an idea or a concept, it is reality. All of the things here come from forever. We call forever nirvana in Zen.
The mind of the Buddha is perfect because it is empty and yet it contains all things.
You and I are both life. There's just the experience of every moment. We like to call them moments. There isn't really such a thing. There's just is-ness; there's just eternity.
There are no words, there's only the possibility of a moment even more incredible a little bit further down the road.
You come back to the beginning. That's why in the "Searching for the Ox" sequence, at the very end of that sequence of the Zen paintings, we're back in the world again.
The world is filled with people who understand. I personally value people who don't understand. People who understand have nothing more to learn. People who don't understand have hope. Do you understand?
I don't think anyone knows why they meditate. As a matter of fact I'm not even sure that we do meditate. All we know is that we don't know.
A person trying to meditate is doing something that's impossible since meditation is not an action.
