Sunday, August 12, 2007

some good zen or buddhist quotes

People in the West are always getting ready to live.
—Chinese Proverb

The mind, the Buddha, living creatures - these are not three different things.
—Avatamasaka Sutra

If you live the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still bobbing in the ocean of delusion.
—Lin-Chi

The heart Sutra teaches that "form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. "Many people don't know what that means--even some long time students of meditation. But there is a very easy way to see this in our every day lives. For example, here is a wooden chair. It is brown. You sit in the chair, and it holds you up. You can place things on it. But then you light the chair on fire, then leave. When you come back later, the chair is no longer there! This thing that seemed so solid and string and real is now just a pile of cinder and ash which the wind blows around. This example shows how the chair is empty: It as no independent existence. Over a long or short time, the chair will eventually change and become something other than it appears. So, the brown chair is complete emptiness. But though it always has the quality of emptiness, this emptiness is form: you can sit in the chair, and it will hold you up. "Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form." ....Zen Quotes byZen Master Seun Sahn, The Compass of Zen

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