Overthinking

It is imperative to cut off the mind road.

If you do not cut off the mind road, you will be a ghost, clinging to the grass.

Wu Men Hui-k’ai,, 1183–1260, Chinese Chán master

Don’t give your power away

I think of the past twenty years,
when I used to walk home quietly
from Kuo-ch’ing,

All the people in the Kuo-ch’ing monastery –
would say, “Hanshan is an idiot.”

“Am I really an idiot:” I reflected.
But my reflections failed to solve the question:
for I myself do not know who the self is,
So how can others know who I am?

Hanshan,  9th century, Chinese Buddhist/Taoist poet

Sunday Quote: A light in the heart

No striving, no grasping at this or that, no entertaining any self-involved stories whatsoever.

Instead, attention pivots toward a light in the heart in which the ‘field of boundless emptiness’ is revealed.

All questions and doubts are put to rest.

Hongzhi Zhengjue, 1091–1157, Chinese Chan Buddhist monk

In this moment

False views make up the world
true views are from the world beyond,

when true and false are both dismissed
your buddha nature will manifest

this is simply the straightforward teaching

delusion lasts countless kalpas
awareness takes but an instant.

Huineng,  638 – 713, the Sixth Patriarch of Chan Buddhism, founder of the “Sudden Enlightenment” school of Buddhism

[a  kalpa is a long period of time in Hindu and Buddhist thinking]

Sunday Quote: Before

Can you remember who you were,

before the world told you who you should be?

Charles Bukowski, 1920 – 1994, American poet, novelist, and short story writer.

This is what’s asked of us

A new month…

The angels, the furies
Are never far away
While we dance, we dance,
Trying to keep a balance
To be perfectly human
(Not perfect, never perfect,
Never an end to growth and peril),
Able to bless and forgive
Ourselves.


This is what is asked of us.

May Sarton, The Angels and the Furies