Posted inHenry's Messages, Koans, Mu

Message from Henry: A Few Thoughts

February 4, 2015

The sudden clear recognition that we never existed the way we thought we did: true kensho.

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We are all falling into the loam of Mu, where our self can split open, die and bring forth the shoot of the original face of all things.

***

Please just don’t forget: it’s for real. The purpose of this training is to help us first to have a glimpse of reality, and then slowly painstakingly to help us shift our center of gravity in such a way that we tip over from faith in the dream we have known and taken for reality, to the true fact, the “original face that has existed from before even our parents were born”. It can happen. As long as there are lineages devoted to the Dharma of Zen, who use the koans as instruments of reality, and people asking the big questions of life, then Zen has a place, and may continue for a little bit longer at least.

***

The sudden clear recognition that we never existed the way we thought we did: true kensho.

***

All this, every moment as it is, is the land of the Unborn, as Bankei calls it. Birth is the land of no-birth, dying is the land of no-death. This land is infinite in space and infinite in time, and infinite in potential and possibility. What are we worrying about?

***

If we’re really clear then remote or abstract things like ‘success’ or ‘failure’ make no difference to us, because all there is is here and now, and it extends forever.

***

 The problem is not x, but our way of seeing and thinking which produces x.

 ***

A Buddhist master was asked if fear ever came up for him. He answered, “Of course.”

The student, a bit surprised, asked: “How do you deal with it?”
“What do you mean?” the master responded.
“Well, what do you do about it?
“Do about it?” he said. “I agree with it, of course.”

Image: Sunset-Abstract, CC0 Public Domain photos, from pixabay.com

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