Sublime

“To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all the myriad things.”

materialism, in which we inadvertently think of practice as a means to “get” certain kinds of experience—at

“To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all the myriad things.”

—Alan Watts, The Way of Zen

One of the core planks of the approach to life and meditation this book offers is that we don’t need blinding revelations or massive enlightenment experiences (though they may come) to encounter an unconditional love waiting to be touched in the heart of even ordinary moments.

the path to understanding is not through speculation or philosophical discourse but through personal realization, which requires avoiding distractions and cultivating whatever brings one closer to one’s own mind.

If you think Zen is something lofty and esoteric, the master will give you a shout or slap for an answer. If you think it is abstract, you’ll be told it’s three pounds of flax or the oak tree in the garden. If you think it is beyond words and abstractions, the master may quote the sutras or a poem by Han Shan. If you think Zen is nothing but our ev

There is a legend in which the Buddha comes upon the mind of not picking and choosing.3 On the edge of his own profound change of heart, the Buddha meditates all night under a fig tree, and an image comes to mind. He remembers that, as a child, while his father plowed a field in an annual ceremony, he was left in the shade of a rose apple tree. At

essence of wisdom, whereby our everyday activities become the focus of our spiritual cultivation.