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

Some people fight boredom in meditation, yet to be bored can be a good thing; it can mean the beginning of an appreciation for bare, plain qualities. Enduring your own consciousness is so valuable, I thought, Why shouldn’t a koan be there just to bore you? In this way, might not you appreciate your mind even when it is not being amused or having a

I saw then that this is one of those embarrassing stories in which the storyteller unconsciously describes his own mind. I thought the koan was boring, but I hadn’t let it all the way in. I thought the koan was lazy, but no, that was also me. And I had convinced a few of my colleagues as well. It’s really nice to have your delusions exploded; it’s

that must be achieved. On the other hand, freedom is always interesting. When I was without what I should do and might do and could do, I just did what was obvious and was given to me. I experienced that as one of the shapes of love.

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

more likely reason was that he liked the broken leg, the splinters sticking out, and the rough branch bound to it. It made the chair more interesting. “This, this,” he thought when he looked at it. He seemed to enjoy whatever was happening, and was a good host to whatever guest arrived. If it was cold, he enjoyed winter and the fire; if it was hot,

There isn’t really a clear path to changing your life completely, so she just more or less understood that it was a possibility and went on with her routine.

Occasionally, awakening from sleep you may wonder, “Where on earth am I?” Or, fleetingly, in a more disoriented awakening, the question becomes, “Who am I?” or even, “What am I?” These moments, when you open your eyes in the world as if for the first time, like a newborn, can be delicious. With the uncertainty comes a feeling of freedom.

what does that mean, to dislike? Dislike could mean that you are feeling a strain between how things really are and your story about how things are. Since maps are always fictions, and always smaller than the territory, such a divergence happens every day. When it does, you might let go of your fiction or revise it. Usually this is not what happens

The working of the universe goes on constantly like hands finding other hands. Gravity, electromagnetism, and quantum mechanical effects go on simultaneously, and I think of the split-photon experiment in which if you change the spin on one particle, you alter another one, which might be miles or light-years away. That all happens like the left han