Is a wave trapped by the Ocean?

If there isn't any difference between you and the trap,

then you are not trapped.


--- from "Out of the Trap" by Alan Watts

If by eternity we mean timelessness,

then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.


--- Ludwig Wittgenstein

the NOW that I AM

The NOW that I HAVE immediately fades away into the past,
moment by moment,

but the NOW that I AM never falls away to become the past,
and is therefore the same as eternity.


--- from "money sex war karma" by David R. Loy

on 'being-time'

Time is not something I have; it's what I am...

(lack of) time was never the problem, but rather the false sense
of a distinction between ME and "MY" TIME...

My being and my time are not distinguishable...Instead of me being IN space and time,
it's more accurate to say that I am what space and time are doing, right here and now.


from "money sex war karma" by David R. Loy

undivided knowing is existence itself

Remember that the separate self can never discover the Truth.

In the end, the Truth just awakens to itself through you.


--- Stephan Bodian

direct apperception of being itself

...in spiritual illumination,

the apparent separation between knower and known

dissolves into pure, undivided knowing,

which is simply existence itself.


--- Stephan Bodian

buddha nature

Only come to know the nature of your own mind,

in which there is no self and no other,

and you will in fact be a Buddha.


--- Huang Po

witnessing without a witness

All are endowed with the wisdom and virtue of the Tathagata,

yet simply because of delusions and preoccupations,

cannot bear witness to their endowment.


--- attributed to the Buddha

what else is there ?

You say, "I am ignorant of my true nature,"

but how can this be? What else is there besides

this infinite, eternal, non-dual field of

Consciousness-and-form which is already present,

right here and now...and now...and now...


--- Joel Morwood

nothing (no one) separate

If anything appears to be other than yourself,

you absolutely cannot have peace of mind.


--- Yasutani Roshi

the dropping away of body and mind

Dogen absolutely did not return home as an unenlightened being,

but rather,

having completely dropped away the skin -- of ideas, concepts, perceptions, and beliefs,

and

having "become" nothing but the one reality.


--- Yasutani Roshi

the "Great Self"

What the Buddha means by the self

is precisely the whole universe.


Thus,

whether one is aware of it or not,

there is no universe that is not the self.


--- Dogen

when attention "returns"

When attention returns to its Source in Consciousness Itself,

there is an opportunity to realize that

"Oh, of course,

THIS IS IT!

THIS IS WHO I AM!

THIS IS WHAT EVERYTHING IS!"


--- Joel Morwood

The Impersonal Awareness of Being is the ONLY Truth. -- Ramesh Balsekar

Impersonal Awareness, or What IS

transcends and includes

all the apparent movements of attention,

and

its conditioned by-products

of perception, conception, and identification.

direct, non-volitional apperceiving

What does Atma darsana, 'direct perception of That' mean?


Seer-seeing-seen: these three are realized

as modifications created by the mind,

superimposed on the one all-pervading Consciousness.


--- Anandamayi Ma

It is as it is -- Ramana

What seekers have so long been searching for

Turns out to be

PRECISELY What IS,

Just as it is.

where nothing is, there is everything -- Anandamayi Ma

Awareness becomes consciousness when it has an object.

The object changes all the time.

In consciousness there is movement [subject-object];

Awareness by itself is motionless and timeless, here and now.


--- Nisargadatta Maharaj

just this

"Intimacy" and "realization" are synonymous in traditional Zen Buddhist texts.


--- Robert Aitken

terms

"Satori", now an English word, thanks to its introduction by D.T. Suzuki, has come to imply omniscient wisdom.

I much prefer the term KENSHO, which holds the more modest meaning of "seeing into (essential) nature."

"Shunyata", the void, expresses deepest experience ---

but I find that all too readily it becomes something abstract called "nothing."


--- From "Original Dwelling Place" by Robert Aitken

all

Someone asked master Yun-men,

"What is the eye of the genuine teaching?"


The master said,

"It's everywhere!"

the Tathagata's inexpressible radiance

There is nothing at all from the very beginning.

Purity of the mind is "not a single thing."

When all forms are abandoned, there is the Buddha,

but even the Buddha can in no way be identified.

If the mind depends on anything, it has no sure haven.


--- from "Original Dwelling Place" by Robert Aitken

not even "nothing"

It is better to have nothing

than something good.


--- Yun-men

overcome everything

"Is the green fog, like the guardian, something that one has to overcome in order to SEE?" I asked Don Juan.

"Yes. One must overcome everything," he said.

"How can I overcome the green fog?"

"The same way you should have overcome the guardian, by letting it turn into nothing."

"What should I do?"

"Nothing. For you, the green fog is something much easier than the guardian...You never really SAW the guardian."

"Maybe that was because I didn't like it."

"No, you still don't understand. It doesn't matter whether you like or dislike the guardian. As long as you have a feeling toward it, the guardian will remain the same: monstrous, beautiful, or whatever. If, on the other hand, you have no feeling toward it, the guardian will become nothing and will still be there in front of you."

I insisted on asking him what he meant by that.

"You thought the guardian was something you knew; that's what I mean."

"But I didn't think it was something I knew."

"You thought: it was ugly; its size was awesome; it was a monster. You know what all those things are. So the guardian was always something you knew, and as long as it was something you knew you did not SEE it. I have told you already, the guardian had to become nothing and yet it had to stand in front of you. It had to be there and it had, at the same time, to be nothing."

nothing is known

When a man learns to SEE, not a single thing he knows prevails - not a single one...not a single thing is any longer the same. Once we SEE, nothing is known - nothing remains as we used to know it when we didn't SEE.


--- Don Juan speaking, in "A Separate Reality" by Carlos Castaneda

THIS existence

To experience Bodhidharma's zen, there is no need to destroy THIS existence---YOU ARE FACING EVERYTHING....you suddenly realize that THIS existence, "I and that," are your original nature and that you cannot say a word about it, cannot divide THIS existence into two pieces (mind and matter). Of course in that moment, all color, all sound, everything together, disappears [as such]. This is what is known as sudden enlightenment, Bodhidharma's zen.


---from "The Zen Eye" by Sokei-an