Mind

The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings the past and the future are not as real, but more real than the present. The present cannot be lived happily unless the past has been “cleared up” and the future is bright with promise.

Koans are designed to short-circuit the intellectual process and to open up the intuitive aspects of our consciousness. To understand the vitality of koan study, one must understand that the question, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” for example, is not a riddle or a paradox. It’s a question that has to do with the most basic truth. It’s

Beginning students will often be preoccupied with trying to “answer” koans, not understanding that the questions posed by koans aren’t the kind of questions that have answers. Instead, koans are stories designed to help us see beyond the dichotomy of questions and answers, to enable us to stay with what seems like an irresolvable paradox, to stay

When we lose our mind—our thinking brain—even temporarily, we make space for our soul, our emotions, to flourish. We experience the world directly, without interrupting thoughts.

Whatever may be true for the Chinese and the Hindus, it is timely for us to recognize that the future is an ever-retreating mirage, and to switch our immense energy and technical skill to contemplation instead of action.

The loss of the sense of a self separate from the world around it is sometimes accompanied by a feeling of union with the environment, whether it is the mountain, a team, or, in the case of this member of a Japanese motorcycle gang, the “run” of hundreds of cycles roaring down the streets of Kyoto: “I understand something, when all of our feelings