From ekp@excite.com Wed Aug 1 05:37:07 2001 From: ekp@excite.com (ike) Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 21:37:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Dailydharma] dailydharma Message-ID: <20814771.996640629608.JavaMail.imail@scorch.excite.com> The teaching of the mind ground Is the basis of Zen study. The mind ground is The great awareness Of being as is. - Fayan --------------------------------------------------------- Daily Words of the Buddha Difficult is life for the modest one who always seeks purity, is detached and unassuming, clean in life, and discerning. Dhammapada 245 _______________________________________________________ Send a cool gift with your E-Card http://www.bluemountain.com/giftcenter/ From ekp@excite.com Thu Aug 2 06:56:09 2001 From: ekp@excite.com (ike) Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 22:56:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Dailydharma] dailydharma Message-ID: <17576619.996731769910.JavaMail.imail@scorch.excite.com> What I point out to you Is only that You shouldn’t allow yourselves To be confused by others. Act when you need to, Without further hesitation or doubt. People today can’t do this What is their affliction? Their affliction is in their lack of self-confidence. If you do not spontaneously Trust yourself sufficiently, You will be in a frantic state, Pursuing all sorts of objects And being changed By those objects, Unable to be independent. - Linji (d.867) --------------------------------------------------------- Daily Words of the Buddha He has broken the cycle, attained freedom from desire. The dried-up stream no longer flows. The cycle, broken, no longer turns. This, just this, is the end of misery. Udana VII, 2 _______________________________________________________ Send a cool gift with your E-Card http://www.bluemountain.com/giftcenter/ From ekp@excite.com Fri Aug 3 06:49:04 2001 From: ekp@excite.com (ike) Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2001 22:49:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Dailydharma] dailydharma Message-ID: <8245746.996817746201.JavaMail.imail@scorch.excite.com> Few people believe their Inherent mind is Buddha. Most will not take this seriously, And therefore are cramped. They are wrapped up in Illusions, cravings, Resentments, And other afflictions, All because they love The cave of ignorance. - Fenyang ------------------------------------------------------------- Daily Words of the Buddha One who destroys life, utters lies, takes what is not given, goes to another man's wife, and is addicted to intoxicating drinks -- such a man digs up his own root even in this world. Dhammapada 246-7 _______________________________________________________ Send a cool gift with your E-Card http://www.bluemountain.com/giftcenter/ From ekp@excite.com Sat Aug 4 19:19:48 2001 From: ekp@excite.com (ike) Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2001 11:19:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Dailydharma] long dharma from Daily Zen (page 1 of 2) Message-ID: <26458071.996949188995.JavaMail.imail@scorch.excite.com> The Mind Ground - T'aego At the behest of the King, T'aego gave a brief outline of the basic principles of Zen: There is something bright and clear, without falsity, without biases, tranquil and unmoving, possessed of vast consciousness, fundamentally without birth and death and discrimination, without names and forms and words. It engulfs space and covers all of heaven and earth, all of form and sound, and is equipped to function. If we speak of its essence, it is so vast it embraces everything, so that nothing is outside of it. If we speak about its function... even great sages cannot get to the end of it. This one thing is always with each and every person. Whether you move or not, whenever you encounter circumstances and objects, it is always very obvious and clear, clear everywhere, revealed in everything. It is quietly shining in all activities. As an expedient, it is called Mind. It is also called the Path, and the king of the myriad dharmas, and Buddha. Buddha said that whether walking, sitting or lying down, we are always within it. Even Yao and Shun said: "Holding faithfully to the mean, without contrived activity, everything under heaven is well ordered." Weren't Yao and Shun sages? Weren't the buddhas and enlightened teachers special people? They simply managed to illuminate This Mind. Therefore, since antiquity, the buddhas and enlightened teachers have never established words and texts as sacred: they just transmitted Mind with Mind, without any other separate teaching. If there is some other teaching outside This Mind, this is a deluded theory, not the words of the Buddha. Thus, when we use the name Mind, it is not the ordinary person's mind that falsely engenders discrimination: rather, it is the silent and motionless Mind in each person. People cannot preserve this inherent Mind for themselves. Unwittingly they make false moves and are suddenly thrown into confusion by the wind of objects: they are buried in sensory experiences, which arise and disappear again and again. They falsely create the karmic suffering of endless birth and death. Therefore, the buddhas and enlightened teachers and sages appeared in the world by the power of their past bodhisattva vows. They use great compassion and directly point out that the human mind is inherently enlightened, and they enable people to awaken to the mind-buddha. Your majesty must contemplate his own inherent mind. During lulls in the myriad functions of state, Your Majesty should sit upright in the palace, without thinking of good and evil at all, just like a golden statue of Buddha. Then the false thinking of birth and destruction is totally obliterated and the obliterating is obliterated, in an instant the mindground is quiet and motionless, with nothing to rest on. Body and mind are suddenly empty: it's like leaning on the void. All that appears here is total clarity and illumination. At this moment you should look carefully at your original face before your father and mother were born. As soon as it is brought up, you awaken to it: then like a person drinking water, you know yourself whether it is cool or warm. It cannot be described or explained to anyone else. It's just a luminous awareness covering heaven and earth. When the realm I've just talked about spontaneously appears before you, you will have no doubts about birth and death, you will have no doubts about the sayings of the buddhas and enlightened teachers- indeed, you will have met the buddhas and enlightened teachers. This is the wonder transmitted from person to person by buddhas and enlightened teachers since antiquity. You must make it your concern: be careful not to neglect it. Be like this even when attending to affairs of state and working for the renovation of the people. Use this Path also to be alert to all events and to encourage all our ministers and common subjects to share together in the uncontrived inner truth and enjoy Great Peace. Then the buddhas are sure to rejoice. - T'aego (1301-1382) Taken from A Buddha from Korea: The Zen Teachings of T'aego, Thomas Cleary (1988) * _______________________________________________________ Send a cool gift with your E-Card http://www.bluemountain.com/giftcenter/ From ekp@excite.com Sat Aug 4 19:26:39 2001 From: ekp@excite.com (ike) Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2001 11:26:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Dailydharma] long dharma from DailyZen (page 2of2) Message-ID: <17143874.996949599683.JavaMail.imail@scorch.excite.com> We no longer live in times where leaders ask Zen masters for guidance nor where true guidance is that easily attainable. However, to one who is sincerely trying to cultivate the "mind that seeks the Way" the tradition is still alive and worth finding. To understand how to maintain practice throughout one's daily life is the koan for many of today's students. That is at heart what T'aego is offering to the King in the excerpt above, how to realize Mind in everyday activities. Sometimes using language at all to communicate becomes the main barrier, then we have the language of ages past and the situation becomes more abstruse. In more recent times this same message was communicated in the following: * You can be your own sage. You can be your own teacher if you are a person for whom no task is worth losing the Way. No goal, no thing, nothing you are doing, is really worth throwing that awareness away for. No feeling that you have is as important as staying at that cool, clear center of awareness. If you are going to move like a fly buzzing around, or you are going to be oppressed by a thought or feeling that comes up, where is your love of the Way then? Where is your love of the Way when you are buzzing around? That is when you have to keep coming back and find it. This takes a tremendous effort. A tremendous amount of energy is all that it takes the next time you feel that way. It is like pushing your way through to your second wind. The next time that you have a feeling oppressing you, stand up, observe and use every atom of energy you have to observe. Don't just sit there and let it push you to the ground. To be that still, clear mind everyday is the only thing that makes life truly worth living. The rest is just gaining, winning, and losing. You should put every atom into living these principles -- to realize them, to see them, to use them. Everything you do is from Blue Sky Mind. You don't run off with your delusions when they arise. You see them as clouds. You understand that which stays and that which goes. This consciousness that you have, the Blue Sky Mind observes all these states and sees them all clearly. - Taken from unpublished manuscripts of Traceless Way _______________________________________________________ Send a cool gift with your E-Card http://www.bluemountain.com/giftcenter/ From ekp@excite.com Sun Aug 5 09:26:42 2001 From: ekp@excite.com (ike) Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2001 01:26:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Dailydharma] dailydharma Message-ID: <27815208.997000003389.JavaMail.imail@scorch.excite.com> What are the two most common goals for people who live in the world? Wealth and fame. To gain these goals people are willing to lose everything, including the health of their body, mind and spirit. Not a very good exchange, is it? Worldly wealth and fame fade so quickly that we wonder which will last longer, the money, the fame or the man. But consider the goal of enlightenment, of attaining the wealth of the Dharma. Those who reach this goal are vigorous in body, keen in mind, and serene in spirit…right into eternity ..........Han Shan --------------------------------------------------------- Daily Words of the Buddha One should give up anger, renounce pride, and overcome all fetters. Suffering never befalls him who clings not to mind and body and is detached. Dhammapada 221 _______________________________________________________ Send a cool gift with your E-Card http://www.bluemountain.com/giftcenter/ From ekp@excite.com Mon Aug 6 06:56:42 2001 From: ekp@excite.com (ike) Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2001 22:56:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Dailydharma] dailydharma Message-ID: <1482955.997077403933.JavaMail.imail@hook.excite.com> Unaware of illusion Or enlightenment, >From this stone I watch The mountains, hear the stream. A three-day rain has Cleansed the earth, A roar of thunder split the sky. Ever serene are linked phenomena And though the mind’s alert, It’s but an ash heap. Chilly, bleak as the dusk I move through, I return, a basket brimmed With peaches on my arm. - Genko (1505) --------------------------------------------------------- Daily Words of the Buddha A man is not versed in Dhamma because he speaks much. He who, after hearing a little Dhamma, realizes its truth directly and is not heedless of it, is truly versed in the Dhamma. Dhammapada 259 _______________________________________________________ http://inbox.excite.com From ekp@excite.com Tue Aug 7 12:36:55 2001 From: ekp@excite.com (ike) Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 04:36:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Dailydharma] dailydharma Message-ID: <3984769.997184223086.JavaMail.imail@hook.excite.com> If you have developed great Capacity and cutting insight, You can undertake Zen Right where you are. Without getting it from another, You understand clearly On your own. - Yuanwu ---------------------------------------------------- Daily Words of the Buddha He is not noble who injures living beings. He is called noble because he is harmless towards all living beings. Dhammapada 270 _______________________________________________________ http://inbox.excite.com From ekp@excite.com Wed Aug 8 15:09:33 2001 From: ekp@excite.com (ike) Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2001 07:09:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Dailydharma] dailydharma Message-ID: <124404.997279789485.JavaMail.imail@knuckles.excite.com> There are people who, though having accomplished nothing, connive to receive great honors or high positions of authority. Well, people who gain high rank without having earned it are like rootless trees. They live in fear that even the slightest wind will topple them. Undeserved honor is a preface to disgrace. Maxims of Master Han Shan (from Journey to Dreamland) -------------------------------------------------------------- Daily Words of the Buddha There are those who do not realize that one day we all must die. But those who do realize this settle their quarrels. Dhammapada 6 _______________________________________________________ Send a cool gift with your E-Card http://www.bluemountain.com/giftcenter/ From ekp@excite.com Thu Aug 9 06:48:06 2001 From: ekp@excite.com (ike) Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2001 22:48:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Dailydharma] dailydharma Message-ID: <28191667.997336087240.JavaMail.imail@knuckles.excite.com> Though night after night The moon is stream reflected Try to find where it has touched, Point even to a shadow. - Takuan (1573-1645) ----------------------------------------------------------- Daily Words of the Buddha At death a person abandons what he construes as mine. Realizing this, the wise shouldn't incline to be devoted to mine. Sutta Nipata IV, 6 _______________________________________________________ Send a cool gift with your E-Card http://www.bluemountain.com/giftcenter/ From ekp@excite.com Fri Aug 10 06:42:43 2001 From: ekp@excite.com (ike) Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 22:42:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Dailydharma] dailydharma Message-ID: <4113678.997422164135.JavaMail.imail@knuckles.excite.com> By successfully concealing his crimes a person can’t consider himself honorable. He knows he’s done wrong. By constantly bragging a person can’t claim to be famous even though he does hear his name mentioned everywhere he goes. By affecting the manners of holy men monks may receive veneration , but a pious demeanor never made anyone a saint. What are true honor, true recognition and true piety? They are internal qualities, not superficial acts or appearances. When a man’s conscience is free from stain, he is honorable. When his reputation for integrity precedes him, he is famous. When humility and reverence for the Dharma flow naturally out of his character, he is esteemed. .......Han Shan ------------------------------------------------------------- Daily Words of the Buddha Who is wise and virtuous, Gentle and keen-witted, Humble and amenable, Such a one to honour may attain. Digha Nikaya 31 _______________________________________________________ Send a cool gift with your E-Card http://www.bluemountain.com/giftcenter/ From ekp@excite.com Sat Aug 11 08:54:32 2001 From: ekp@excite.com (ike) Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2001 00:54:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Dailydharma] dailydharma Message-ID: <6728040.997516472646.JavaMail.imail@hook.excite.com> Everything in the universe is subject to change. There’s only one exception: death always follows life. Isn’t strange that people haven’t noticed this, that they conduct their lives as though they’re going to live forever, that death is nothing to worry about? Of course if they really want to live as long as they obviously expect, they’d better pursue the Dharma. Life, death, and change itself are transcended in the Dharmakaya. ......Han Shan -------------------------------------------------------------- Daily Words of the Buddha Good are friends when need arises; good is contentment with just what one has; good is merit when life is at an end, and good is the abandoning of all suffering. Dhammapada 331 _______________________________________________________ http://inbox.excite.com