Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life

Can you find where this moment comes from or where it goes home to?

We take our minds for granted, imagining that they will behave themselves, but they don’t. It can’t be assumed that we will think what we intend to think, and we don’t always do what we tell ourselves to do. We might believe that we are our thoughts and feelings, but our thoughts and feelings are objects in the world, just like tables and mirrors.

My mother, the doctor thought, was waiting for my arrival and might not last the night. “Dying of what?” I asked him. “Nothing, everything.”

Ordinary means that there is no need to add or take away from what is going on in the mind. Each portion of life has the whole of life. There is nothing wrong with what is in the mind except the sense that something is wrong. In this way simplicity turns to a form of compassion.

Zhaozhou often quoted this saying by Sengcan: “The great way is not difficult if you just don’t pick and choose.”

if you approach small children without an agenda, if you can match the openness of their minds, you too are open.

wound, a sorrow you have carried very carefully like a glass filled to the top with water, has no longer any life or interest in it and does not require you to keep a watchful balance anymore.

One of the virtues of meditation is that it allows you to tolerate or even enjoy such between moments, to befriend the material your mind throws to the surface when it is not otherwise occupied by chasing something or trying to improve its condition.

And even this indirect approach is not based on a plan. It’s hard to plan for something that takes you beyond what you can imagine, which is what this method is designed to do.

I have begun, when I am weary and can’t decide the answer to a bewildering question to ask my dead friends for their opinion and the answer is often immediate and clear.2 —MARIE HOWE