Among the grasses,
An unknown flower
Blooming white.
―Zen Haiku
Painting by Agnes Martin, Gratitude, 2011.
(Source: parabola-magazine)
Among the grasses,
An unknown flower
Blooming white.
Zen Haiku
We have never lost Paradise, but human consciousness tells us we have lost it and that we have to regain it. But in fact, Paradise has never been lost, Paradise is never to be therefore regained. We are in Eden, just as we are now.
Be, and at the same time, not be. To be or not to be, but then, to be and not to be. Both at the same time. The best thing is to be living, and yet not living. Dying yet not dying. That is the object of Zen discipline.
Zen is a floating cloud…unattached.
What characterizes Zen is this: simplicity and sincerity, and freedom. This is the one most important. Real freedom to see things in their “suchness,” I would say. That is freedom.
Sometimes so-called facts are not so important. But what scholars call imaginations or legends, they are more important in the study of human nature.
Zen masters tell us that the answer is in the question itself, you look into your question yourself. My answer only leads you farther away from the question.
Who are you to ask that question?
–Daisetsu Teitarō Suzuki (October 18th,1870 - July 12th,1966)
(via: Myoan Shakuhachi)
Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities.
D.T. Suzuki
The Zen disciple sits for long hours silent and motionless. Presently he enters a state of impassivity, free from all ideas and all thoughts. He departs from the self and enters the realm of nothingness. This is not the nothingness or the emptiness of the West. It is rather the reverse, a universe of the spirit in which everything communicates freely with everything, transcending bounds, limitless. There are of course masters of Zen, and the disciple is brought toward enlightenment by exchanging questions and answers with his master, and he studies the scriptures. The disciple must, however, always be lord of his own thoughts, and must attain enlightenment through his own efforts. And the emphasis is less upon reason and argument than upon intuition, immediate feeling. Enlightenment comes not from teaching but through the eye awakened inwardly. Truth is in the discarding of words, it lies outside words.
Yasunari Kawabata, courtesy of Whiskey River.
R GUILLAIN, F MEILLEAU, P LANDY, LE JAPON QUE J’AIME…. EDITIONS SUN PARIS. 1967. In-4 Carré. Thank you, sombhatt & tailfeathers.
(Source: endilletante, via chasingtailfeathers)
Nagasawa Rosetsu, Moon, Edo Period, ink and gold on silk. With thanks to artemisdreaming.
Wang Wusheng, North Sea Guest House, taken at Lion Peak, November 1984, 4 PM (detail). From Celestial Realm: The Yellow Mountains of China
Dogen, one of Japan’s foremost medieval Zen priests, wrote in the Sansui-kyo chapter of the Shobogenzo that “to view sansui is to meet yourself before you were born.” The self before birth is a self beyond time and space. Dogen, wrote that this self is a ‘formless self’ no one has ever seen. This yet unformed self is the essence of sansui. A depiction of something beyond time and space whose appearance is yet unformed. As I stood before Wang’s photographic sansui, I could feel this acutely.
Wang’s stoicism shows itself in the strategic placement of of dark forms, at times centering the frame on forms whose blurring and gradation are overpowered by blackness.
Not mere shadows, the depth of his blacks represent …void and the silence of time.
A dark mass of mountains is not dead space but the very soul of the living mountains. The white sky in his photographs is not an empty sky but a sky shown after the passing of a raging storm, now bathed in sunlight.
–Seigo Matsuoka (excerpt from Photographic Sansui)
Born in the province of Anhui, Wang Wunsheng (1945-) has been photographing the Yellow Mountains since 1974.
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Celestial Realm | The Yellow Mountains of China
Wang Wusheng : Wu Hung : Damian Harper : Seigo Matsuoka
Abbeville Press, 2005 via: historyofourworld.wordpress
Thank you, artemisdreaming.
If only you could hear
the sound of snow…
Hakuin Ekaku
Suzuki Roshi used to say that what was needed most in the monastery were people who were good at cleaning out the corners. The most perverting ideas are the ones that lie for years and years in the dark corners of our mind. Like spiders, they creep out while we are sleeping and spin their webs of illusion. Only when the mind is clean, in order, and uncluttered can the present moment be fully realized. If we hang onto past memories, trophies of our good-old-days, in time our mind and our home will be a museum instead of a place to encounter the present reality. The relationship between house cleaning, garden cleaning, and mental caretaking is not just symbolic. It is very direct.
