"If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything.
In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few."

Shunryu Suzuki - "Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind"

In learning - every day something is added.
In Tao - every day something is dropped.

Why does our little self - our ego - analyse itself?
To be wiser?
Is it the ego that's wise?

not
dark
yet
firefly

J. S. O'Connor

The philosopher/writer Albert Camus seems to be right when he says:

"To think is first of all to create a world (or to limit one’s own world, which comes to the same thing)."

A. Camus – "The Myth of Sisyphus"

"Such awareness is a lively attention to one’s direct experience,
to the world as immediately sensed,
so as not to be misled by names and labels."

Alan Watts - "The Way of Zen" 😃

Our little mind can’t examine our little mind.

Our mind uses thoughts and feelings to create an ego.

The ego builds a fantasy-reality to feel safe and satisfied.

Let's smile with compassion at our little mind and ego.

To love is spontaneously being without the ego's and thought's calculations.

bsky.app/profile/zenw... 🙂

No, but a 2003-book. Probably the best Scandinavian novel the last 25 years:
Per Petterson - "Out Stealing Horses"

"This world–

to what may I liken it?

To autumn fields

lit dimly in the dusk

by lightning flashes.”

Minamoto-no-Shitago (911-83)
(Yoel Hoffmann - "Japanese Death Poems")
#zen #buddhism

I like Woolf.
But if we look at life, it's Being.
Every moment we live, we ARE.
"Becoming" points to something which doesn't exist.
"Becoming" is our thought/idea of some non-existent time (future). And a thought is neither time nor life.

I talked to my aunt and cousin, and they were so happy and thankful!!
😀

Love cannot be enforced or mastered,
so it seems that love and freedom
are words for essentially the same thing.

"You must be true to your own way until at last you actually come to the point
where you see it is necessary to forget all about yourself."

Shunryu Suzuki - "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind"

"A monk sips morning tea,
it's quiet,
the chrysanthemum's flowering."

Basho

"The barking of a dog
is a very good teacher,
better than Zen masters."

Seung Sahn - "Wanting Enlightenment is a Big Mistake"

"At dusk
Come to my hut—
The crickets will
Serenade you, and I will
Introduce you to the moonlit woods."

Ryōkan

What beauty!
bsky.app/profile/mari...

"Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded.
It’s a relationship between equals.
Only when we know our own darkness well
can we be present with the darkness of others."

Pema Chödrön - "The Places That Scare You"

And of course the guru is also thinking and judging🙂

"There are two ways to wash the dishes.
The first is to wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes
and the second is to wash the dishes in order
to wash the dishes.”

T. Nhat Hanh - "The Miracle of Mindfulness"

"Nibbãna is here and now.
It’s not an attainment in the future.
The reality is here and now.
It is so very simple..."

A. Pasanno / A. Amaro - "The Island"

"If someone should ask me what this is all about,
Smiling, I’d point to the pure breeze and bright
moon."

Zhenru - (Beata Grant. "Daughters of Emptiness: Poems of Chinese Buddhist Nuns")

This is why we do Zazen.

"The object of meditation isn’t to change ourselves,
to throw out the old and bring in the new.
It’s about making friends with ourselves,
meeting each and every part of our lives
with curiosity and compassion."

Frank Ostaseski - "The Five Invitations"

Being too ambitious is an aggression towards ourselves and other people.
When we're thinking about big "future" goals, our mind is trying to escape from the present moment.
It’s futile and often creates conflicts and hostility.
Just love what you're doing
now.
See what happens...

snow falls on snow
silence

Santōka

"So they were called 'Sages who, abandoning learning, have come to rest in spontaneity'."

Huang Po - "The Zen Teaching of Huang Po on the Transmission of Mind" (translator John Blofeld)