Ryokan

First days of spring.....blue sky, bright sun.
Everything is gradually becoming fresh and green.
Carrying my bowl, I walk slowly to the village.
The children, surprised to see me,
Joyfully crowd about, bringing
my begging trip to an end by the temple gate.
I place my bowl on top of a white rock and
Hang my sack from the branch of a tree.
Here we play with the wild grasses and throw a ball.
For a time, I play catch while the children sing;
Then it's my turn.
Playing like this, here and there, I have forgotten the time.
Passers-by point and laugh at me, asking,
"What is the reason for such foolishness?"
No answer I give, only a deep bow;
Even if I replied, they would not understand.
Look around! There is nothing besides this.

Pema Chödrön / Comfortable with Uncertainty

There was once a lady who was arrogant and proud. Determined to attain enlightenment, she asked all the authorities how to go about it. She was told, "Well, if you climb to the top of this very high mountain, you'll find a cave there. Sitting inside that cave is a wise old woman. She will tell you."

Having endured great hardships, the lady finally found this cave. Sure enough, sitting there was a gentle spiritual-looking old woman in white clothing, who smiled beatifically. Overcome with awe and respect, the lady prostrated at the feet of this woman and said, "I want to attain enlightenment. Show me how."

The wise woman looked at her and asked sweetly, "Are you sure you want to attain enlightenment?" And the lady said, "Of course I'm sure." Whereupon the smiling woman turned into a demon, stood up brandishing a great big stick, and started chasing her, saying, "Now! Now! Now!"
For the rest of her life, that lady could never get away from the demon who was always saying, "Now!"

Now - that's the key. Mindfulness trains us to be awake and alive, fully curious, about now. The out breath is now, the in breath is now, waking up from our fantasies is now, and even the fantasies are now. The more you can be completely now, the more you realize that you're always standing in the middle of a sacred circle.

Whatever you're doing, you're doing it now.

Edward Abbey

One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourself out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast, a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to your body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards.

zen story

A monk asked Seng ts'an, "Master, show me the way to liberation."

Seng ts'an replied, "Who binds you?"

The monk responded, "No one binds me."

Seng ts'an said, "Then why do you seek liberation?"

timothy speed levitch

i am cruising currently right now
i am cruising because i have dedicated myself
to all that is creative and destructive in my life right now
and i'm equally in love
with every aspect of my life
and all the ingredients that have caused me turmoil
and all the ingredients that have caused me glory

in that active verb 'fleeting' there i live
there i reside in this moment
i have dedicated myself to the idiom 'i don't know'
i am in love with the frantic chaos of this limitless universe

J. Krishnamurti

So, when living, be with death, so that you are a guest in this world, so that you have no roots anywhere, so that you have a brain that is amazingly alive. Because if you carry all the burdens of yesterday, your brain becomes mechanical, dull. If you leave all the psychological memories, hurts, pains, behind, every day, then it means dying and living are together. In that there is no fear.

Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not Be A Christian

"Nothing, absolutely nothing, remains just what it is. For Buddhists, the most basic fact or quality of the world is not being, as it is for most Western philosophers and theologians: it’s becoming. To be is to become, one can “be” only if one is in motion. (We can note an immediate difference here from what we heard about the Christian God: for Western, Christian theologians, to call God perfect means he doesn’t change; for Buddhists, if we call God perfect, it means that God is the most changeable reality we could imagine!)

But just why is everything impermanent and in constant change? The answer has to do with what might be called the flip-side of anicca: pratityasamutpada, or, technically, “interdependent origination.” More simply: everything changes because everything is interrelated. Everything comes into being and continues in being through and with something else. Nothing, Buddha came to see, has its own existence. In fact, when he wanted to describe the human self, or the self/identity of anything, the term he used was anatta, which means literally no-self… We are not “selves” in the sense of individual, separate, independent “things.” Rather, we are constantly changing because we are constantly interrelating (or being interrelated)."