Today, if we are to live in peace with a minimum of suffering, we must establish a spiritual foundation — in both our social and domestic lives — that is not controlled by the external world.

It was a case where the development of concentration in one kind of practice brought about results in Zen practice.

As long as the mind is moving, it is unable to accurately reflect the various aspects of the external world, just as a warped mirror cannot reflect objects as they really are. Accordingly, we cannot expect clear judgment from an agitated mind.

In other words, although each one of us is actually the richest person in the world, we continue to see ourselves as hapless beggars, full of pain and suffering. In truth we are all intrinsically endowed with buddha nature, perfect and lacking nothing. We are, in fact, Buddha. It is only delusion that prevents our buddhahood from shining forth in i

Such a quality of suddenness is an indispensible element of truly seeing our nature, and without it, an experience of awakening cannot be confirmed.

Nevertheless I would be going too far if I said that from that point onward the mind would automatically act in direct response to what has been experienced, totally freed from distinctions of self and other. They may have realized that there is fundamentally no self and no other, but the emotions and delusions based on dualistic ideas are as stubb

One of the basic prerequisites for Zen experience is for the practice to become single-mindedly pure. Whether the practice is with koans or just sitting, as long as attention is divided between the koan and concerns about the outcome, the practice will never be truly pure. This is why the Zen ancestors criticized Zen with the expectation of enlight

A verse by Ikkyū reads: What is mind? The sound of the wind in the pine tree in the brush painting.

But it is very difficult to actually persist, embodying the content of enlightenment so that it becomes part of our daily lives.