Zen masters say you cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water.
Zen is about breaking out of your ideas and experiencing life and not ideas.
I'm a Zen Master. I'm an occult teacher. I teach people how to become that, how to be perfect.
I learned that you can stand up for yourself and still maintain your zen!
What is Tantric Zen? Well, I don't think I can give you a straight answer, since I don't happen to be a very straight Zen master.
A Zen master is someone whose life is one with enlightenment and self-discovery. They can never be separated from that. They've been essentially mastered by Zen.
People say that practicing Zen is difficult, but there is a misunderstanding as to why. It is not difficult because it is hard to sit in the cross- legged position, or to attain enlightenment. It is difficult because it is hard to keep our mind pure and our practice pure in its fundamental sense.
Sometimes people come up and they get infatuated with some little brief imagistic poem or something, and they say, "Oh, I really like your Zen poems. " And I say, "Which ones are not Zen poems?"
There is a sense of competition in Zen. You are competing with your thoughts and trying to overcome them.
Here it is. My moment of zen.
Zen values the simple, concrete, living facts of everyday direct personal experience.
When I was working at Omega, I took this Zen retreat, where you're quiet, you don't say anything for a week, and this guy there said, "You're going to be enlightened at the end of this week, that's my goal. " I was the engineer, so I was recording everything at it was happening, but I was also participating, because I felt like it. So at the end of it, I did understand what enlightenment was, one-hundred percent.
For Zen students, a weed is a treasure.
Watermelons and Zen students grow pretty much the same way. Long periods of sitting till they ripen and grow all juicy inside, but when you knock them on the head to see if they're ready sounds like nothing's going on.
Not to be bound by rules, but to be creating one's own rules-this is the kind of life which Zen is trying to have us live.
Wabi means spare, impoverished; simple and functional. It connotes a transcendence of fad and fashion. The spirit of wabi imbues all the Zen arts, from calligraphy to karate, from the tea ceremony to Zen archery.
There was a famous Zen master whom people would seek out to become enlightened. He was strict and would occupy people with things having nothing to do with seeking enlightenment. You see, that is the only way to achieve enlightenment; by not focusing on achieving it. Then, one day it will just come to you.
The way of Zen is to become independent and strong. Don't rely on others for perceptions of life and truth. Do it individually. Go to a teacher of Zen to learn how to do that, not to get answers for individual life situations.
There is a beautiful flow to the study of Zen. If it is not making you happier, then you are not practicing correctly.
Zen is like soap. First you wash with it, and then you wash off the soap.