Shunryu Suzuki: Beginner’s Mind

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Shunryu Suzuki: Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind is a book of teachings by the late Shunryu Suzuki, a compilation of talks given to his satellite Zen center in Los Altos, California. Published in 1970 by Weatherhill, the book is not academic. These are frank and direct transcriptions of Suzuki’s talks recorded by his student Marian Derby. Trudy Dixon and Richard Baker (Baker was Suzuki’s successor) edited the talks by choosing those most relevant, arranging them into chapters. According to some, it has become a spiritual classic, helping readers to steer clear from the trappings of intellectualism.

▶ Shunryu Suzuki: Beginner’s Mind – YouTube.

The Minutest Action

Source: The Minutest Action | Great Middle Way

greatmiddleway.wordpress.com

by Tashi Nyima

Sept 28, 2016

 

Manifest phenomena arise through a combination of causes and conditions in a sequence of interdependent events.Now, since all phenomena are interconnected in this way, it follows that within the realm of relative truth the law of cause and effect is inescapable: positive and negative actions will inevitably result in happiness and suffering.

Once the causes and conditions are present, nothing can prevent the result from being produced, just as in the spring, if there are seeds in the ground and if the sun gives warmth and the rain moisture, flowers and fruit will appear.

That is why we should always be aware of the potential of even the minutest of our actions.

—Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Impermanence

“Taking impermanence truly to heart is to be slowly freed from the idea of grasping, from our flawed and destructive view of permanence, from the false passion for security on which we have built everything. Slowly it dawns on us that all the heartache we have been through from grasping at the ungraspable was, in the deepest sense, unnecessary.”

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, page 34.

Source: Holding without Attachment : The Tibetan Blog Of Living And Dying

Do not be a follower

To a visitor who asked to become his disciple, the Master said,
“You may live with me, but don’t become my follower.” “Whom, then, shall I follow?”

“No one. The day you follow someone you cease to follow Truth.”~ Anthony de Mello ~

 

Source: Sojourners Path

The sound of the trees when there is no wind

 It is possible to have the mind so still and so calm and so peaceful that we can hear the sound of the trees when there is no wind.
~ Arvid Straube ~

Sojourners Path

“Is there anything I can do to make myself Enlightened?”

Student: “Is there anything I can do to make myself Enlightened?”

Teacher: “As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning.”

Student: “Then what use are the spiritual exercises you prescribe?”

Teacher: “To make sure you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise.”

~Anthony de Mello

Source: Tao & Zen

Guanyin Prayer

“As long as you are kind and there is love in your heart, a thousand hands will naturally come to your aid. As long as you are kind and there is love in your heart, you will reach out with a thousand hands to help others.”

~Guanyin Prayer~

Source: Tao & Zen

Trees as teachers

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone.

They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche.

In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree…

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.”

~Hermann Hesse

Source: Tao & Zen