Forms and Symbols

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“All manifestations before my eyes are also delusions devoid of substance. They are merely shadows within the mind.”

“Devils come? Just cut them off like a snarl of tangled silk threads.”

“Whenever any thought arises, you should try and find its source; never let it go easily or be cheated by it.”

“When I was seven years old, my mother sent me to school. At that time, I had an uncle who loved me very much. One day, just before I arrived homme from school, he died. When I saw him lying so still on the bed, my mother tried to deceive me about his death, saying ‘Your uncle is asleep. You might wake him up.’ Whereupon I called to my uncle a few times, but he did not answer me. At this my aunt, greatly grief-stricken, cried out to him, ‘Oh my Heaven! Where have you gone?’ Very puzzled, I said to my mother, ‘My uncle’s body lies right here. Why does my aunt say he has gone away?” Then my mother said, ‘Your uncle is dead’. ‘If one dies, where does one then go?’ I asked her, and from that moment this question was deeply impressed on my mind.”

“The gleaming to renounce this world arose continuously within me.”

“Not long after his death the room in which he had lived for thirty years was destroyed by fire, as if to give an omen to his followers.”

“Oh look! The Man of Old Days still exist!”

“Rivers flow all day, but nothing flows.”

“’Your manners seem rather like that of a lunatic. What is the reason for this?’ Master Fa Kuang replied, ‘This is my zen-sickness. When the ‘Wu’ experience came for the first time, automatically and instantaneously poems and stanzas poured from my mouth, like a gushing river flowing day and night without ceasing. I could not stop and since then I have had this zen-sickness.’”

“No trace of men or gods remains.”

“I felt both my mind and body sink quietly down like a house whose four walls had fallen.”

“Time does not wait for people.”

“Nothing in the world can be used as a smile to describe it.”

“My bowels moved a hundred times a day and brought me to the brink of death.”

“All things are reducible to one, but what is the one reducible to?”

“Oh it is you, the fellow I have known all the time, Who goes and returns, In the thirty thousand days of one… Hundred years!”

“Where in dreamless sleep is the Master?”

“Who is the very Master of this awakening and where does he rest his body and lead his life?”

“To understand the wonderfully cold, sweet and palatable, but not bitter, taste of ice cream is not to have actually experienced that taste.”

“It seems unthinkable to us that the mind can function without having an object to think about.”

“’Wu’ is the direct experience of beholding, unfolding, or realizing the Mind-essence in its fullness.”

“If you return your bones to your father and your flesh to your mother, where would ‘you’ then be?”

“Cultivation of self awareness or pure consciousness will this eventually annihilate all dualistic thoughts and bring one to Buddhahood.”

“Two monks were arguing whether it was the wind or the flag that was moving. For a long time, they could not settle the problem. Then Hui Neg arose […] and said: ‘It is neither the wind, nor the flag, but the mind that moves’.”

“When the bright sun arises. Embroideries cover the whole earth. The hanging hairs of the infant are as white as snow. The order of the king is sanctioned in the whole nation, while the general is isolated from the smoke and dust. Far away, beyond the borderland.”

“While no message is forthcoming from Ping and Fang, one stays alone in the whole area. While the Emperor ascends his royal nest, the songs the old folks sing are heard from the field.”

“The weeds have not yet been cleared.”

“In the lump of red flesh there is a True Man of No Position. He constantly goes in and comes out by the gate of your face. Those who have not seen him should try and do so.”

“The All-Merciful One has a thousand arms and a thousand eyes. Which is the main eye?”

“A mountain is a mountain, water is water, when hungry I eat, when drowsy I sleep; I do not search for the Buddha or look for Dharma, yet I always make my obedience to the Buddha.”

“Focusing the attention on any part within the body will produce extraordinary and sometimes astonishing results.”

[Excerpts from “The Way of Zen”]

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