Sublime

Lee Ching-yuen left clear-cut guidelines for those who wish to follow his footsteps and emulate his example. He followed three primary rules in his regimen: 1. Never hurry through life. Take it slowly, take it easy, and take your time. He instructed his students to always keep a quiet heart, sit as calmly as a tortoise, walk as sprightly as a bird,

Zen practice is to see through our desire to cling to our history and to reasons (thoughts) for why we are as we are, instead of working with the reality of what we are.

When we live our life fully, our life becomes what Zen Buddhists call “the supreme meal.” We make this supreme meal by using the ingredients at hand to make the best meal possible, and then by offering it.

Our Zen training is designed to enable us to live comfortable lives. But the only people who live comfortably are those who learn not to dream their lives away, but to be with what’s right-here-now, no matter what it is: good, bad, nice, not nice, headache, being ill, being happy. It doesn’t make any difference.

Ma-tsu had another notable disciple in Po-chang (720–814), who is said to have organized the first purely Zen community of monks and to have laid down its regulations on the principle that “a day of no working is a day of no eating.” Since his time a strong emphasis on manual work and some degree of self-support has been characteristic of Zen commu

he introduced the Middle Way, a balanced approach that avoided the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification.