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The spiritual descendants of Huai-jang and Hsing-ssu live on today as the two principal schools of Zen in Japan, the Rinzai and the Soto. In the two centuries following the death of Hui-neng the proliferation of lines of descent and schools of Zen is quite complex, and we need do no more than consider some of the more influential individuals.24 The
... See moreAlan W. Watts • The Way of Zen
Although the ch’iang-hsing (striving hard) of line six seems at odds with Lao-tzu’s dictum of wu-wei, “doing nothing/effortlessness,” commentators are agreed that here it refers to inner cultivation and not to the pursuit of worldly goals.
Red Pine • Lao-tzu's Taoteching
Hung-jan was apparently the first of the Patriarchs to have any large following, for it is said that he presided over a group of some five hundred monks in a monastery on the Yellow Plum Mountain (Wang-mei Shan) at the eastern end of modern Hupeh, He is, however, much overshadowed by his immediate successor, Hui-neng (637–713), whose life and teach
... See moreAlan W. Watts • The Way of Zen
Note: According to the biography of the ninth-century poet-recluse Lu Kuei-meng , as recorded in the Hsintangshu (New History of the T’ang Dynasty),
Stonehouse Red Pine • The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse
Hui-neng’s position was that a man with an empty consciousness was no better than “a block of wood or a lump of stone.” He insisted that the whole idea of purifying the mind was irrelevant and confusing, because “our own nature is fundamentally clear and pure.” In other words, there is no analogy between consciousness or mind and a mirror that can
... See moreAlan W. Watts • The Way of Zen
Mu is the thorny Zen concept not of nonexistence, as the translation of “nothingness” suggests, but rather the passing through to that which lies beyond the dualism of existence and nonexistence.