“The Way of Zen” has done what it said it wouldn't because it couldn't. Zen is an experience of tranquil, aimless being. It is, at once, foreign and familiar. It must be learned because it is quiet and quiet things are easy to forget. Because it's an experience, no Zen book can provide its reader with its theme. Yet, I felt quite tranquil and aimless as I read through the 200 pages of Zen's enlightened none-sense, so well organized and explained by Alan Watts.
This book is full of wonderful allegories, poems, proverbs, and historical accounts of the Zen tradition. It is a treasure trove of silencing words. Enjoy the quotes.
The Way of Zen Quotes
Preface
The more alarming and destructive aspects of Western civilization should not blind us to the fact that at this very time it is also in one of its most creative periods.
Western thought has changed so rapidly in this century that we are in a state of considerable confusion.
Above, not a tile to cover the head; below, not an inch of ground for the foot. (A koan of the “Great Void”)
The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head. (Another Western description of the “Great Void” and the spiritual dilema)
Why is a mouse when it spins? (Zen koan, describing the delightful confusion of the spiritual way)
Zen is above all an experience, nonverbal in character, which is simply inaccessible to the purely literary and scholarly approach.
“The objective observers” invariably miss the point (of Zen) and eat the menu instead of the dinner.
Part One: Background and History
Chapter 1: The Philosophy of the Tao
The task of education is to make children fit to live in a society by persuading them to learn and accept its codes – the rules and conventions of communication whereby the society holds itself together.
In English the differences between things and actions are clearly, if not, always logically, distinguished, but a great number of Chinese words do duty for both nouns and verbs – so that one who thinks in Chinese has little difficulty in seeing that objects are also events, that our world is a collection of processes rather than entities.
When we say that we can think only of one thing at a time, this is like saying that the Pacific Ocean cannot be swallowed at a gulp.
It is not easy to say why we must communicate with others (speak), and with ourselves (think) by this one–at–a –time method. (Watts is referring to languages the structure of letters, words, and sentences.) life itself does not proceed in this cumbersome, linear fashion…
Confucianism (a major influence on Zen) preoccupies itself with conventional knowledge, and under its auspices, children are brought up, so that their originally wayward and whimsical natures are made to fit the Procrustean bed of the social order (linguistic, ethical, legal, and ritual conventions).
Taoism concerns itself with unconventional knowledge, with the understanding of life, directly, instead of in the abstract, linear terms of representational thinking.
In certain natures, the conflict between social convention and repressed spontaneity is so violent that it manifests itself in crime, insanity, and neurosis…
To be free from convention is not to spurn it, but not to be deceived by it.
The absolute must never be confused with the abstract (referring to concepts like spirit and pure-being).
We can admit that we “know” how to move our hands, how to make a decision, or how to breathe, even though we can hardly begin to explain how we do it in words. (Referring to the accessibility of peripheral-knowledge, natura naturans “nature naturing”, or tzu-jan “spontaneity of life”)
We do not depend upon such irrelevant trifles as the chance tossing of a coin, or the patterns of tea leaves, or cracks in a shell. (Referring to our mistrust of unconventional-knowledge; divination, rituals, and magic)
The reliability of our decisions rests ultimately upon our ability to “feel” the situation, upon the degree to which this “peripheral vision” (ie; hunch or gut feeling) has been developed.
One does not consult the oracle without proper preparation, without going quietly and meticulously through the prescribed rituals in order to bring the mind into that calm state, where the “intuition” is felt to act more effectively. (Suggesting a necessity for being in a flow state)
Lao-tzu says: there was something vague before heaven and earth arose. How calm! How void! It stands alone, unchanging; it acts everywhere, untiring. It may be considered the mother of everything under heaven. I do not know its name, but call it by the word Tao.
The Tao is something blurred and indistinct. How distinct! How blurred! Yet within it are images. How blurred! How indistinct! Yet within it are things. How dim! How confused! Yet within it is mental power. Because this power is most true, within it there is confidence.
For the point seems to be fat as one’s own head looks like nothing to the eyes yet is the source of intelligence, so the vague, void – seeming, and undefinable Tao, is the intelligence with shapes the world with a skill beyond our understanding.
The important difference between the Tao, and the usual idea of God is that whereas God produces the world by making (Wei), the Tao produces it by “not-making“ (wu-wei) – which is approximately what we mean by “growing.” For things made are separate parts put together… Whereas things grown divide themselves into parts, from within outwards… The Tao operates, according to spontaneity (unconventional) not according to plan (conventional).
In the usual Western conception, God is also self-knowing-transparent through and through to his own understanding, the image of what men would like to be: the conscious ruler and controller, the absolute dictator of his own mind and body. But in contrast with this, the Tao is through and through mysterious and dark. (Taoism honors the unknowable by learning to live with it without defining it)
“When the inferior man hears of the Tao, he will laugh aloud at it. If he did not laugh, it would not be the Tao.” - Lao Tzu
“Cut out cleverness, and there are no anxieties!”-Lao Tzu
The Western mistrust of human nature- whether theological or technological-is a kind of schizophrenia.
Suzuki was once asked how it feels to have attained satori, the Zen experience of “awakening,” he answered, “just like ordinary, every day experience, except about two inches off the ground!”
Lieh-Tzu gave the following accounts of his training under his master Lao Shang: After I served him… For the space of three years, my mind did not venture to reflect on right and wrong, my lips did not venture to speak of profit and loss. Then, for the first time, my master bestowed one glance upon me – and that was all. At the end of five years, a change had taken place; my mind was reflecting on right and wrong, and my lips were speaking of profit and loss. Then, for the first time, my master relaxed his countenance and smiled. At the end of seven years, there was another change. I let my mind reflect on what it would, but it no longer occupied itself with right and wrong. I let my lips utter whatsoever they pleased, but they no longer spoke of profit and loss. Then, at last, my master, let me in to sit on the mat beside him.
I knew not whether the wind was riding on me, or I on the wind.
“A drunken man who falls out of a cart, so he may suffer, does not die. His bones are the same as other peoples; but he meets the accident in a different way. His spirit is in a condition of security… And if such security is to be got from wine, how much more is it to be got from spontaneity.” - Chuang-tzu
“Body like dry bones, mind like dead ashes; this is true knowledge, not to strive after knowing the whence. In darkness, in obscurity, the mindless (Wu-hsin) cannot plan; what mannerof man is that?” -Chuang-tzu
The true mind is no mind… in the same way, the eyes are seeing properly, when they do not see themselves, in terms of spots, or blotches in the air.
The centipede was happy, quite, until a toad in fun, said, “oh, pray, which leg goes after which?” This worked his mind to such a pitch, he lay distracted in a ditch, considering how to run.
Superior work has the quality of an accident.
Tao is something beyond material existences. It cannot be conveyed either by words or by silence. - Chuang Tzu
Chapter 2: The Origins of Buddhism
“It is man who makes truth great, not truth which makes man great.” – Confucian principle.
Man himself is greater than any idea which he may invent.
Reasonable – that is, human-men will always be capable of compromise, but men who have dehumanized themselves by becoming the blind worshipers of an idea, or an ideal are Finatticz, who is devotion to abstractions, makes them the enemies of life.
The basic myth of Hinduism is that the world is God playing hide-and–seek with himself.
According to the myth, the divine play goes on through endless cycles of time, through periods of manifestation and withdrawal of the worlds measured in units of Kalpas, the Kalpa being a span of 4,320,000,000 years.… From the divine standpoint, it has all the fascination of the repetitious games of children, which go on, and on because time has been forgotten, and has reduced itself to a single wondrous instant.
“The Knower can know other things, but cannot make himself the object of his own knowledge, in the same way that fire can burn other things, but cannot burn itself.” - Shankara
Now classification is precisely Maya. The word is derived from the Sanskrit root matr- “to measure, form, build, or lay out a plan,” the route from which we obtain such Greco-Latin words, as meter, matrix, material, and matter. (There is similarity between Confucianism and Taoism and the Hindu terms, Brahman and Maya.)
The doctrine of Maya is, therefore a doctrine of relativity. It is saying that things, facts, and events are delineated, not by nature, but by human description, and that the way in which we describe (or divide) them is relative to our varying points of view.
The Maya doctrine asserts that forms (rupa) have no “own-being” or “self-nature” (svabhava): they do not exist in their own right, but only in relation to one another,… the figure and ground are inseparable, interdependent, or “mutually arising.”
Man is always in danger of confusing his measures with the world, so measured.
The Hindu-Buddhist insistence on the impermanence of the world… Is depressing only to the mind which insists upon trying to grasp.
Any system approaching perfect self-control is also approaching perfect self-frustration.
The desire for perfect control, of the environment, and of oneself, is based on a profound mistrust of the controller. Avidya is the failure to see the basic self-contradiction of this position.
Man is involved in karma when he interferes with the world in such a way that he is compelled to go on interfering, when the solution of a problem creates still more problems to be solved, when the control of one thing creates the need to control several others. Karma is thus the fate of everyone who “tries to be God.”
If Nirvana is “de-spiration” it is the act of one who has seen the futility of trying to hold his breath for life (prana) indefinitely, since to hold, the breath is to lose it. Yes, Nirvana is the equivalent of Moksha, release or liberation.
A Buddha is a man of no rank. He is not above, like an angel; he is not below, like a demon.
Buddhism does not share the Western view that there is a moral law, and joined by God, or by nature, which is man’s duty to obey.
The higher stages of Buddhist practice are as much concerned with disentanglement from “good karma” as from “bad.”
The non-duality of the mind, in which it is no longer divided against itself, is samadhi, and because of this disappearance of that fruitless thrashing around of the mind to grasp itself, somebody is a state of profound peace.
Sitting meditation is not, as is often supposed, a spiritual “exercise,” a practice followed for some ulterior object. From a Buddhist standpoint, it is simply the proper way to sit, and it seems perfectly natural to remain sitting so long as there is nothing else to be done, and so long as one is not consumed with nervous agitation.
Where there is purpose, there is no dhyana (meditation).
What happens to my fist when I open my hand? Where does my lap go when I stand up?
Chapter 3: Mahayana Buddhism
When questioned about the nature of nirvana, the origin of the world, and the reality of the self, the Buddha maintained a “noble silence,“ and went on to say that such questions were irrelevant, and did not lead to the actual experience of liberation.
Wherever the Mahayana continues to teach the way of liberation by ones own effort, it does so as an expedient for bringing the individual to a vivid awareness of his own futility.
For their sakes the bodhisattva consents to be born again, and again, into the round of Samsara, until, in the course of innumerable ages, even the grass and the dust have a attained Buddhahood.
To seek nirvana, is the folly of looking for what one has never lost.
What has never arisen does not have to be annihilated.
From “wisdom, for crossing to the other shore,” a literature, closely associated with the work of Nagarjuna; all, grasping, even for Nirvana, is futile, for there is nothing to be grasped.
It cannot be called void or not void, or both or neither; but in order to point it out, it is called “the void”
What appears to us to be Samsara is really Nirvana, and that what appears to be the world of form (Rupa) is really the void (Sunya).
The so-called “ordinary person” is only apparently natural, or perhaps that his real naturalness feels unnatural to him.
Since one’s own true nature is already the Buddha nature, one does not have to do anything to make it so.
If intuitive wisdom (Prajna) is to see that “the form is void,” compassion (Karuna) is to see that “the void is form.” Mahayana Buddhism is, therefore, an “affirmation” of the every day world and its natural “suchness (Tathata).”
The attainment of the one does not involve the annihilation of the other.
Chapter 4: The Rise and Development of Zen
Enter into awakening without exterminating the defilements (Klesha).
Every moment of time is “self-contained and quiescent.“
“Though spirit lies beyond the world, it stays ever within it.” – Seng-chao
Instantaneous awakening, is more appropriate to the Chinese mentality then to the Indian, and lends weight to Suzuki’s description of Zen as the Chinese “revolution” against Indian Buddhism.
Zen tradition represents Bodhidharma as a fierce-looking fellow, with a bushy beard and wide-open, penetrating eyes-in which, however, there is just the hint of a twinkle. A legend says that he once fell asleep in meditation, and was so furious that he cut off his eyelids, and falling to the ground, they rose as the first tea plant. Tea has thereafter supplied Zen monks with a protection against sleep, and so clarifies and invigorates the mind that it has been said, “the taste of Zen [ch’an] and the taste of tea [ch’a] are the same.
Seven times down, eight times up! – Popular Japanese poem
“I have no peace of mind [hsin],” said Hui-k’o. “Please pacify my mind.” “Bring out your mind here before me,” replied Bodhidharma, “and I will pacify it!” “but when I seek my own mind,” said Hui-k’o, “I cannot find it.” “There!” snapped Bodhidharma, “I have pacified your mind!” (this is after the emperor of Wu, Hui-k’o cut off his own arm in repentance for not understanding Zen)
The characteristic Zen method of instruction - the wen-ta (Japanese, mondo), or “question – and – answer,” sometimes loosely called the Zen story.
One must see the point immediately, or not at all.
“What is the method of liberation?” asked Tao-hsin. “Who binds you?” replied Seng-ts’an. “No one binds me.” “Why then,” asked Seng-ts’an, “should you seek liberation?” And this was Tao-hsin’s satori.
Fa-yung, who lived in a lonely temple on Mount Niu-t’ou, and was so wholly that the birds used to bring him offerings of flowers.
(Contrasting to Zen poems from two different authors); The body is the bodhi tree; the mind like a bright mirror standing. Take care to wipe it all the time, and allow no dust to cling. Second poem; There never was a bodhi tree, nor a bright mirror standing. Fundamentally, not one thing exists, so where is the dust to cling?”
A man with an empty consciousness was no better than “a block of wood, or a lump of stone.”
The attempt to work on one’s own mind is a vicious circle.
“The word “sitting” means not to stir up. Thoughts in the mind.” - Hui-neng
To be awakened at all, is to be awakened completely, for, having no parts or divisions, the Buddha nature is not realized bit by bit.
About seeking for the Buddha nature, “it’s much like riding an ox in search of the ox.”
Fearing that none of you would understand, they (the Buddhas) gave it the name Tao, but you must not base any concept upon that name. So it is said that “when the fish is caught, the trap is forgotten.”
The sages who, abandoning learning, rest in spontaneity.
There is no place in Buddhism for using effort.
Popularity almost invariably leads to a deterioration of quality.
Huang-lung devised, three test questions, known as “Huang-lung’s Three Barriers”: Question: Everybody has a place of birth. Where is your place of birth? Answer: early this morning, I eat white rice gruel. Now I’m hungry again. Question: how is my hand like the Buddhas hand? Answer: playing the lute under the moon. Question: how is my foot like a donkey’s foot? Answer: when the white heron stands in the snow, it has a different color.
If you train yourself to be a sitting Buddha, (you should know that) the Buddha is not a fixed form.
Prolonged sitting is not much better than being dead.
A living man, who sits, and does not lie down; a dead man who lies down, and does not sit! After all these are just dirty skeletons.
Part Two: Principles and Practice
Chapter 1: Empty and Marvelous
The opening words of the oldest Zen poem say that; The perfect way (Tao) is without difficulty… the conflict between right and wrong is the sickness of the mind. - Hsin-hsin Ming
The fondest illusion of the human mind is that in the course of time everything may be made better and better.
The only alternative to a life of constant progress is felt to be a mere existence, static and dead.
Life is not a situation from which there’s anything to be grasped or gained.
To eat is to survive to be hungry.
Men feel themselves to be victims or puppets of their experience, because they separate “themselves” from their minds… There is no “myself” apart from the mind-body, which gives structure to my experience.
We learn to identify ourselves with our idea of ourselves.
For by a slight change of viewpoint, it is as easy to feel that “I breathe” as that “it breathes me.”
Decision “happens.” (As opposed to “making” decision.)
“Get the feel” of this relativity.
“I had believed that I was created, but now I must change my opinion: I was never created; I was the cosmos; no individual Mr. Sasaki existed.” - Zen Master Sokei-an Sasaki
The reality of all “inseparable, opposites” - life and death, good and evil, pleasure and pain, gain and loss - is that “between” for which we have no words.
“What are they?” asked Ma-tsu. “They’re wild geese,” said Po-chang. “Where are they going?” demanded Ma-tsu. Po-chang replied, “They’ve already flown away.” Suddenly Ma-tsu grabbed Po-chang by the nose and twisted it so that he cried out in pain. “How,” shouted Ma-tsu, “could they have ever flown away?” This was the moment of Po-chang’s awakening.
Life is a position of time. Death is a position of time. They are like winter and spring, and in Buddhism we do not consider that winter “becomes” spring, or that spring “becomes” summer. (Spring stays as spring in that point of time and dies into non-being before and after. Summer comes and is only summer for the time that it is. In between there is the void, the great River Zen.)
The flowers depart when we hate to lose them; the weeds arrive, while we hate to watch them grow. - Dogen
Zen begins at the point where there is nothing further to seek, nothing to be gained.
When asked about the meaning of Buddhism, he answered: “Wait until there is no one around, and I will tell you.”
What is to be gained from? Zen is called wu-shih or “nothing special.”
Before I had studied Zen, for 30 years, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it’s just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters. - Ch’ing-yuan
To remain caught up in ideas and words about Zen is, as the old Masters say, to “stink of Zen.”
Ma-tsu, the old man west of the river said: “It is not mind; it is not Buddha; it is not a thing.”
“What’s this?” The students would usually drop squarely into the trap, and say, “a matchbox!” At this, Professor Lee would say, “no, no! It’s this-“ throwing the matchbox at the class, and adding, “matchbox is a noise. Is this a noise?”
“Without saying a word, point to the difference between my fingers.” At once it is clear that “sameness” and “difference” are abstractions.
We cannot find any self apart from the mind, and we cannot find any mind apart from those very experiences, which the mind-now vanished – was trying to grasp.
When we look for things there is nothing but mind, and when we look for things there is nothing but mind.
“Only when you have no thing in your mind, and no mind in things are you vacant and spiritual, empty and marvelous.” - Te-shan
The passing of the seasons is not passively suffered, but “happens” as freely as one wonders in the fields, knocking at old stumps with a stick.
“The Tao, without doing anything leaves, nothing undone.” – Lao Tzu
Chapter 2: Sitting quietly, Doing nothing
In both life and art the cultures of the far east appreciate nothing more highly than spontaneity or naturalness.
A man rings like a cracked bell when he thinks and acts with a split mind… The illusion of the split comes from the minds attempts to be both itself, and its idea of itself, from a fatal confusion of fact with symbol.
“In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don’t wobble.”- Yen-t’ou
If one is going to reflect, just reflect – but do not reflect about reflecting.
Yun-men was asked, “What is the Tao?” he answered simply, “Walk on!”
The mind which cannot grasp itself is called the “unborn” (Fusho).
I see that it is actually impossible not to be spontaneous.
“The great gate is wide open to bestow alms, and no crowd is blocking the way.” - Cheng-tao Ke
“At one stroke I forget all my knowledge! There’s no use for artificial discipline, for, move as I will, I manifest the ancient way.” - Hsiang-yen
Zen describes all means and methods for realizing the Tao as “legs on a snake” – utterly irrelevant attachments.
“If you are a real man, you may by all means, drive off with the farmer’s ox or grab the food from a starving man,” Yuan-wu. This is only to say that Zen lies beyond the ethical standpoint.
Wu-nien; “nien” means blocking. Wu-nien, in the context of Zen practice, means no second thought.
“He does not linger where the Buddha is, and where there is no Buddha, he passes right on.” - Zenrin poem
Chapter 3: Za-zen and the Koan
There is a saying in Zen that “original realization is marvelous practice.”
The practice of Zen is not the true practice so long as it has an end view, and when it has no end in view, it is awakening.
To practice with an end in view is to have one eye on the practice, and the other on the end, which is lack of concentration, lack of sincerity.
One does not practice Zen to become a Buddha; one practices it because one is a Buddha from the beginning-this “original realization “is the starting point of the Zen life.
Original realization is the “body” and the marvelous practice of its “use”, and the two correspond respectively, to wisdom and the compassionate activity of the awakened bodhisattva in the world of birth and death.
Za-zen is simply a quiet awareness, without comment on whatever happens to be here and now. This awareness is attended by a most vivid sensation of “non-difference” between one’s self and the external world, between the mind and its contents.
In Buddhism, the four principal activities of men – walking, standing, sitting, and lying- are called the four “dignities,” since they are the postures assumed by the Buddha nature and its human “nirmanakaya” body.
The so called past is the top of the heart; the present is the top of the first; and the future is the back of the brain.
Teaching of Bankei: you are primarily Buddhas; you are not going to be Buddhas for the first time. There is not an iota of a thing to be called error in your inborn mind… If you have the least desire to be better than you actually are, if you hurry up to the slightest degree in search of something, you are already going against the Unborn.
The perfection of Zen is to be perfectly, and simply human.
The basic position of Zen is that it has nothing to say, nothing to teach.
“What comes in through the gate is not family treasure” is understood in Zen to mean that what someone tells you is not your own knowledge.
The words of Lin-chi: “Sometimes I take away the man, but do not take away the circumstances. Sometimes I take away the circumstances, but do not take away the man. Sometimes I take away both the man and the circumstances. Sometimes I take away neither the man nor the circumstances.“
Whatever we can know - life and death, light and darkness, solid, and empty - will be the relative aspects of something as inconceivable as the color of space.
Zen life is not, therefore, satori – not the “original mind” – but everything one is left free to do and to see and feel when the cramp in the mind has been released.
Chapter 3: Zen and the Arts
The favorite subjects of Zen artists, whether painters or poets, are what we should call natural, concrete, and secular things.
The arts of Zen are not merely or primarily representational. Even in painting, the work of art is considered not only as representing nature, but as being itself a work of nature.
In a universe, whose fundamental principle is relativity rather than warfare, there is no purpose because there is no victory to be won, no end to be attained.
Paradoxical as it may seem, the purposeful life has no content, no point. It hurries on and on, and misses everything. Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing, for it is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world.
People in a hurry cannot feel.
“Nature“ is a world to which man belongs, but which he does not dominate; it is sufficient to itself, for it was not “made for“ anyone and has no purpose of its own. As Hsuan-chueh said: “over the river, the shining moon; in the pine trees, sighing wind; all night long, so tranquil – why? And for whom?
One of the most striking features of the Sung landscapes is the relative emptiness of the picture – an emptiness, which appears, however, to be part of the painting, and not just unpainted background.
The secret lies in knowing when one has “said“ enough. What Zen sometimes calls “playing the stringless lute.”
There is a suggestive parallel between the meaningless babble of the happy lunatic, and the purposeless life of the Zen sage.
The aimless life is the constant theme of Zen art of every kind, expressing the artists’ inner state of going nowhere in a timeless moment.
Where the mood of the moment is solitary and quiet, it is called sabi.
The non-Japanese listener must remember that a good haiku is a pebble thrown into the pool of the listeners mind, evoking associations out of the richness of his own memory.
The haiku sees things in their “suchness,” without comment.
In Zen a man has no mind apart from what he knows and sees, and this is almost expressed by Gochiku in the haiku: the long night; the sound of the water; says what I think.
Sabi (one of the four moods of Zen) is loneliness in the sense of Buddhist detachment, of seeing all things as happening “by themselves” in miraculous spontaneity.
Wabi, the unexpected recognition of the faithful “suchness.”
Aware is the echo of what has passed and what was loved, giving them a Residence, such as a great cathedral, gives to a choir, so that they would be the poorer without it.
Aware is the moment of crisis between seeing the transience of the world with sorrow and regret, and seeing it as the very form of the great void.
Yugen signifies a kind of mystery, it is the most baffling of all to describe. The poems must speak for themselves: the sea darkens; the voices of the wild ducks are faintly white.
A fallen flower returning to the branch? It was a butterfly. - Moritake
The Soto Zen monk and hermit Ryokan is a wandering fool, unselfconsciously, playing games with children, living in a lonely hut in the forest, where the roof leaks and the wall is hung with poems in his marvelously, illegible, spidery hand writing, so prized by Japanese calligraphers. He thinks of the lice on his chest as insects in the grass, and expresses the most natural human feelings - sadness, loneliness, bewilderment, or pity – without a trace of shame or pride.
The thief left it behind - the moon at the window. - Ryokan poem
The sense of an infinitely expanded present is nowhere stronger than in cha-no-yu yo, the art of tea.
If Christianity is wine, and Islam coffee, Buddhism is most certainly tea.
Tea’s quietening, clarifying, and slightly bitter taste, gives it almost the same taste, as awakening itself.
Description of ceremonial tea; powdered green tea: “the froth of the liquid Jade.”
Every appurtenance of the cha-no-yu (tea ceremony) has been selected in accordance with canons of taste over which the most sensitive men in Japan have brooded for centuries.
Though the guests avoid political, financial, or business matters in their conversation, there is sometimes non-argumentative discussion of philosophical matters, though the preferred topics are artistic and natural.
A few find the secret of bringing the two worlds together, of seeing the “hard realities” of human life to be the same aimless working of the Tao as the patterns of branches against the sky. In the words of Hung Tzu-ch’eng how do: if the mind is not over laid with the wind and waves, you will always be living among blue mountains and green trees. If your true nature has the creative force of nature itself, wherever you may go, you will see fishes leaping and geese flying.
The Zen gardener has no mind to impose his own intention upon natural forms.
In regards to Zen in the art of archery; the art cannot be learned unless the arrow “shoots it self,” unless the string is released without mind and without blocking or choice.
The brush must draw itself.
The genuine haiku has dropped off all by itself, and has the whole universe inside it.
To travel is to be alive, but to get somewhere is to be dead.
To travel well is better than to arrive.
The Zen of breath: because Zen does not involve an ultimate dualism between the controller and the controlled, the mind and the body, the spiritual and the material, there is always a certain “physiological“ aspect to its techniques. Great importance is attached to the way of breathing. Not only is breathing one of the two fundamental rhythms of the body; it is also the process in which control and spontaneity, voluntary and involuntary, find their most obvious identity.
The real reason why Zen has always called itself, “The way of instantaneous awakening” is not just that Satori comes quickly and unexpectedly, all of a sudden, for mere speed has nothing to do with it. The reason is that Zen is a liberation from time.
“Such a tide, moving, seems to sleep, too full for sound or foam.” - Nan-ch’uan