Leonard Cohen, “If It Be Your Will,” from Various Positions, 1984, from i12bent & ajumptotheleft)
Leonard Cohen was always a master teacher and a practitioner of the Koan, long before he went up Mount Baldy to become a Zen monk…
I met a man who lost his mind
in some lost place I had to find,
follow me the wise man said,
but he walked behind…
Oh teachers are my lessons done?
I cannot do another one.
They laughed and laughed and said, Well child,
are your lessons done?
are your lessons done?
are your lessons done?
(Photo: Neal Preston)
Thank you i12bent
There is nothing to do. Just be. Do nothing. Be. No climbing mountains and sitting in caves. I do not even say: “be yourself”, since you do not know yourself. Just be. Having seen that you are neither the “outer” world of perceivables, nor the “inner” world of thinkables, that you are neither body nor mind, just be.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, (from sharanam & thisverymind)
Stonehenge’s gardener, ca. 1950s from ratak-monodosico
(Source: themanfromanotherplace, via ratak-monodosico)
Frank Hunter, “Televisions” from darksilenceinsuburbia
Portrait of Zen Master Ikkyū (1394-1481) by Bokusai
Sick of what it is called
Sick of the names
I dedicate every pore
To what’s here
— Ikkyū
Haiku from “Desire for Truth: Zen teachings on realizing what is,” by Roger Hawkins in the new Fall 2010 Issue of PARABOLA.
from parabola-magazine
If we disinterestedly observe the arising and disappearing of all the states we experience, we soon come to realize that each state, each perception, each thought, is reabsorbed into an unspoken knowing, knowing as being. This, the continuum, the only reality, is there before activity commences. Let yourself sink deep within this stillness each time it makes itself felt.
Jean Klein
“If you are really serious, to find out the implications of death, then you have to come into contact with that fact of death, actually come into contact with it - not theoretically, not as something which you have got to face, therefore let’s face it, but rather by coming directly into contact with it, by dying. Dying - I mean by that word, coming to the end of all the things that you have known psychologically, your experiences, your pleasures, to die - every day. Otherwise, you will never know what death is; for it is only in the dying that there is something new, not in continuing the old. Most of us are so weighed down by the known, by the yesterday, by the memories, by the `me’, the `self’, which is but a bundle of memories accumulated yesterday, having no actual existence in itself. Die to those memories; actually die to a pleasure without any argument. If you know what it means to die to a pleasure, to something that you have taken great pleasure in - without argument, without postponement, without any sense of resentment, bitterness - that is what is going to happen when you do die. And to die every day, to everything that you have gathered psychologically, is to be totally reborn. If you do not die in that way, then you have the continual problem of this memory that you have accumulated as the `me’ and the self-centred activity that we indulge in - the thought of `my’ house, `my’ family, `my’ book, `my’ fame, `my’ loneliness - you know, that little entity that moves around incessantly within itself, with its own limited pattern of existence. Will that continue? - you understand? - that is the problem we have. Either one knows how to die every day, and in dying actually, the mind is fresh, instant, eager, tremendously alive, or, there is this bundle of memories, of self-centred activity, with all its thoughts, searching for fulfilment, wanting to be somebody, imitating, copying. That whole network of thought - will that continue? - yet that is what we want to continue. We say, at the least, if I haven’t fulfilled in this life, perhaps I will in the next.”
— J. Krishnamurti from “Talks in Europe,” 1967, courtesy of The Beauty We Love
Have you ever seen a wheat or barely field in late summer? Sometimes, when the crops have grown nicely and the heads of the plants are rich with grain, the tops bend over. The stalks of the plants can’t hold those rich heads of grain upright. And when the plant does not produce a full head of grain, it stands very straight as the breeze blows over it. This means that the heads are almost empty. Plants that are empty of grain will naturally stand higher and plants that are rich with grain will bend over. Actually, it is much the same with us.
