Thoughts I've thunk while sippin' at a cup of tea and reading something provoking, often get dropped here for the benefit of humanity and my own hubris.
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Buddhism is one of those things that when introduced to a unfamiliar Western student comes across as almost baffling. And my “summary” changes over time the more I study it. Today, I came across my favorite summary to date, from Shunryu Suzuki’s Not Always So (page 81):
In our zazen practice we stop our thinking, and we are free from our emotional activity. We don’t say there is no emotional activity, but we are free from it. We don’t say we have not thinking, but our life activity is not limited by our thinking mind. In short, we can say that we trust ourselves completely, without thinking, without feeling, without discriminating between good and bad, right and wrong. Because we respect ourselves, because we put faith in our life, we sit. That is our practice.
© 2003-2005, Howard Abrams • Except where otherwise noted, all original content is licensed under a Creative Commons License (see details).
I was justing listening to a lecture titled, Toward American Buddhism by Robert Thurmann (part of the “Buddhism in America” series), where he summarized Buddhism by saying:
What is Buddhism then? A therapy the Buddha elaborated for demented human beings.
Also in that lecture, he gave me another great quote when he described the plight of being alive with all of its attendent suffering and confusion:
There is no way out of this mess except to become enlighted and enjoy it.Comment posted on Wednesday, 27 April 2005
| Excerpt: | "When you observe without trying to observe, that is true observation." This quote brings up two separate thoughts and one soapbox. |
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| Tracked: | March 9, 2004 09:22 AM |
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