Pervading Serenity with Blue Mount Silhouette

 

 

 

 

As rain seeps into
an ill-thatched hut,
so passion,
the undeveloped mind.

As rain doesn't seep into
a well-thatched hut,
so passion does not,
the well-developed mind.

-Dhammapada, 1

 

 

 

 

According to Buddhist psychology,

most of our troubles are due to our passionate desire for,

attachment to things that we misapprehend as enduring entities.

 

The pursuit of the objects of our desire and attachment

involves the use of aggression and competitiveness…

These mental processes easily translate into actions,

breeding belligerence.

 

Such processes have been going on in the human mind

since time immemorial,

but their execution has become more effective

under modern conditions.

 

What can we do to control and regulate these “poisons”

—delusion, greed and aggression?

 

For it is these poisons that are

behind almost every trouble in the world.

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama

 

 

 

 

 

You should make your observations yourself,
You should not be the man of someone else,
Not in the dependence on another should you live,
Nor go about making a trade out of holiness.

-Udana Sutta

 

 

Whose minds are well-developed
in the factors of self-awakening,
who delight in non-clinging,
relinquishing grasping--
resplendent,
their effluents ended:
they, in the world,
are Unbound.

-Dhammapada, 6

 

 

 

 

A person of wisdom should be truthful,

without arrogance, without deceit,

not slanderous and not hateful.

The wise person should go beyond the evil of greed and miserliness.

Do not get excited by what is old,

do not be contented with what is new.

Do not grieve for what is lost or be controlled by desire.

-Sutta-nipata

 

 

 

 

 

Your search among books, word upon word,

may lead you to the depths of knowledge,

but it is not the way to receive the reflection of your true self.

When you have thrown off your ideas as to mind and body,

the original truth will fully appear.

Zen is simply the ｅxpression of truth;

therefore longing and striving are not the true attitudes of Zen.

-Dogen, "The Practice of Meditation"

 

 

 

 

 

As long as evil has yet to ripen,
the fool mistakes it for honey.
But when that evil ripens,
the fool falls into
pain.

Month after month
the fool might eat
only a tip-of-grass measure of food,
but he wouldn't be worth
one sixteenth
of those who've fathomed
the Dhamma.

-Dhammapada, 5

 

 

You could, month by month,
at a cost of thousands,
conduct sacrifices
a hundred times
or
pay a single moment's homage
to one person,
self-cultivated.
Better than a hundred years of sacrifices
Would that act of homage be.

-Dhammapada, 8

 

 

 

 

 

“[Wisdom] is like a lamp,

O king, which a man might introduce into a house in darkness.

When the lamp had been brought in it would dispel the darkness,

cause radiance to arise,

and light to shine forth,

and make the objects there plainly visible.

Just so would wisdom in a man have such effects

as were just now set forth.”

-Milindapanha

 

 

 

 

A monk asked,

'If on the road one meets a person of the Way,

how could one respond to that person with neither words nor silence?'

Daopi said, 'With kicks and punches.'

-Zen’s Chinese Heritage

 

 

 

 

 

Zen meditation is not physical culture,

nor is it a method to gain something material.

It is peacefulness and blessedness itself.

It is the actualization of truth and wisdom.

-“The Practice of Meditation,” Zen Master Dogen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 You Are My Destiny / Ernesto Cortazar