
Zen Battles: Modern Commentary on the Teachings of Master Linji

You should be sovereign according to where you find yourself; be the true person wherever you are, not allowing the conditions around you to pull you away.
Thich Nhat Hanh • Zen Battles: Modern Commentary on the Teachings of Master Linji
Master Linji wasn’t trying to defeat his students in these battles; he was trying to defeat their tendency to engage in excessive thinking and rationalizing.
Thich Nhat Hanh • Zen Battles: Modern Commentary on the Teachings of Master Linji
The most noble person is the person who has nothing to do. The only thing you should avoid is thinking about what you are going to do. All you need to do is to be an ordinary person, to be sovereign wherever you are and use that place as your seat of awakening. If you keep thinking about and calculating how to direct your search to what lies outsid
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Master Linji said that when we meet the ghost Buddha, we should cut off his head. Whether we’re looking inside or outside ourselves, we need to cut off the head of whatever we meet, and abandon the views and ideas we have about things, including our ideas about Buddhism and Buddhist teachings.
Thich Nhat Hanh • Zen Battles: Modern Commentary on the Teachings of Master Linji
Buddhist teachings are skillful means to cure our ignorance, craving, and anger, as well as our habit of seeking things outside and not having confidence in ourselves.
Thich Nhat Hanh • Zen Battles: Modern Commentary on the Teachings of Master Linji
“If there remains in your mind a single notion of doubt, that is Mara. If you arrive at understanding the unborn nature of all that is and know that the mind is a magic show, that there is no object, no phenomenon that has a real existence, then wherever you are there is purity, and that is Buddha.
Thich Nhat Hanh • Zen Battles: Modern Commentary on the Teachings of Master Linji
The true person is an active participant, engaged in her environment while remaining unoppressed by it.
Thich Nhat Hanh • Zen Battles: Modern Commentary on the Teachings of Master Linji
So what is it that knows how to talk about and listen to the Dharma? It is the bright clarity, which has not the slightest outer form, standing in front of us here. That is what knows how to speak about and listen to the Dharma. If you are able to see that, you are no different from the Buddha and the masters. The thing is to maintain that insight
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A Buddha is a person who has no more business to do and isn’t looking for anything. In doing nothing, in simply stopping, we can live freely and be true to ourselves, and our liberation will contribute to the liberation of all beings.