Author: Zen Fools

A. A living phrase and a dead phrase are expressions used by masters so that they may warn people no to be deluded by words. When you listen to Dharma talks, or read the Sutras, or the Buddhist books on enlightenment, or the true-Self by ancient masters, you should bear in mind that every single word and every phrase contains all the truth that Buddhism says. This is why ancient masters would say to their students, “Grasp only a single word and you will attain enlightenment.”

The phrase ‘everything is the Buddha’, for example, is one of the most common and popular phrases that appear repeatedly in almost all Buddhist books regarding enlightenment. If we understood it perfectly, everything, including the phrase ‘everything is the Buddha’, should look like the Buddha to us, and if so, we would be enlightened. When every phrase looks and sounds like the Buddha to us, it is referred to as a living phrase. Or, when it causes us to doubt and ask ourselves, “How can I see things as the Buddha? How do things appear when I see them as the Buddha?” it is also called a living phrase.

However, when we listen to Dharma talks, or read Buddhist books in the same way we listen to ordinary lectures and read ordinary literature, we are said to be following dead phrases, or to be deluded by dead phrases.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

#zen #meditation #zenmeditation #enlightened #enlightenment #zenfools #photography

Yuezhou Qianfeng was once asked by a monastic, “Bodhisattvas in the ten directions have one path to the gate of Nirvana. I wonder, what is the path?” Yuezhou drew a line with his staff and said, “It’s right here.”

Student: “Yuezhou, drawing a line with his staff, said, ‘It’s right here’. Where is the ‘here’ he meant?”

Master: “Here.”

Student: “I don’t understand.”

Master: “There.”

Commentary:

Don’t make the mistake of failing to recognise where you are because your eyes are blocked by the word ‘here’.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

#zen #meditation #zenmeditation #enlightened #enlightenment #zenfools #photography

Venerable ones, outwardly speaking by making sound and inwardly trying to work out by thinking and expressing what is in mind are no other than robes. If you take these robes as true teachings, you, even if spending innumerable Kalpas, will only see these robes and transmigrate between birth and death, circulating the Three Worlds. This is not as good as not recognising though meeting and not knowing any name whilst talking together.

Commentary:

Robes imply various illusions. We should not be deluded by the illusions of ourselves created by speaking and thinking. Whether we read the Sutras, meet a great master, or listen to a Dharma talk, if we mistake their robes for true teaching, the chances of our attaining enlightenment are slim to none no matter long we may try. In order to cease being deceived by illusions, you had better pretend not to recognise what you see and hear instead of being deluded by names and forms. This is because you are more likely to try to realise the true-Self when you admit that you don’t know.

Student: “How can I not recognise what I see and hear?”

Master: “See and hear everything without attaching any labels.”

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

#zen #meditation #zenmeditation #enlightened #enlightenment #zenfools #photography

A. The purpose of Zen meditation is not to connect you to the ocean but to help you to realise that you are already one with the ocean since you, as part of the ocean, have never been separated from it. You should be able to feel the connection not only during meditation but also at all other times just as you are sure that you are part of the earth all the time.

Feeling oneness with the earth only while you are concentrated on feeling it and feeling apart from it when you are not in meditation means that you still don’t know not only what the earth is but also what you are because knowing one is knowing the other.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

#zen #meditation #zenmeditation #enlightened #enlightenment #zenfools #photography

One day Master Wunmoon said to his disciples, “Illness and medicine perfectly fit each other. Is the food on the table before you illness or medicine?” Nobody answered the question.

Student: “How can we know whether the food on the table before us is illness or medicine?”

Master: “It is medicine when there is no distance between you and the food. It’s illness when there is any distance between you and the food.”

Student: “Do you eat the medicine all the time?”

Master: “I am not ill.”

Commentary:

There is neither illness nor medicine to a man of health.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

#zen #meditation #zenmeditation #enlightened #enlightenment #zenfools #photography

Venerable ones, do not misunderstand robes. They never move, but they seem to move because man wears them. There is the robe of purity, the robe of the unborn, the robe of enlightenment and the robe of Nirvana, the patriarchal robe and the robe of the Buddha. Venerable ones, these are only sounds, names and conceptions that change like robes. They arise from the abdomen, are stuttered out between the teeth, and become meaningful. You should know that they are nothing but illusionary phantoms.

Commentary:

When we see and hear things, we should be able to see and hear what moves and changes them beyond their forms and sounds. Although there are a lot of graceful and plausible words such as purity, the unborn, enlightenment, Nirvana, patriarch and the Buddha, these are all illusions, which can be compared to your clothes that you change depending on the weather and the situation in which you are placed. In the same way that whatever elegant clothes you may wear, they are not you but the body in them is you, illusions are not the true-Self but the one that controls the illusions is. All words, phrases and eccentric behaviours that can seem to make no sense whatsoever are merely illusions produced by masters as expedients to keep people from clinging to logical words that sound plausible.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

#zen #meditation #zenmeditation #enlightened #enlightenment #zenfools #photography

A. Enlightenment is nothing to do with whether one has goals and desires. How would the historical Buddha have devoted himself to leading sentient beings to enlightenment had he not had a goal to relieve them from suffering? The enlightened have goals and desires just as the unenlightened do.

However, the difference between the enlightened and the unenlightened is that the former are not swayed by the results of their efforts to pursue their goals of benefitting others and themselves whilst the latter are, because they see all of them as empty and illusionary, just as if they were seeing a movie.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

#zen #meditation #zenmeditation #enlightened #enlightenment #zenfools #photography

One day Guishan called the monastery director. The director came, and Guishan said to him, “I called for the monastery director. Why have you come here?” The monastery director did not give a response. Guishan asked the attendant monastic to get the head monastic. The head monastic came, and Guishan said to him, “I called for the head monastic. Why have you come here?” The head monastic did not give a response.

Student: “If you had been the monastery director, what would you have said then?”

Master: “I’d have said, ‘Because the monastic director cannot be separated from me’.”

Student: “How would you have responded to Guishan if you had been in the head monastic’s shoes?”

Master: “I’d have said, ‘The head monastic sent me because he cannot move’.”

Commentary:

Seeing and hearing the straight amid the curved is seeing the Buddha.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

#zen #meditation #zenmeditation #enlightened #enlightenment #zenfools #photography

How pitiful the blind monastics are! Men who have no eye mistake the robes I am wearing for blue, yellow, red or white. When I take them off and enter the phenomena of purity, students take a glance and rejoice in what they see. When I take it off, they are stupefied, run about frantically beside themselves and say that I am naked. So, I say to them: “Do you know at all the one who puts on all of these robes?” And suddenly they turn their heads and recognise me.

Commentary:

‘Men who have no eye mistake the robes I am wearing for blue, yellow, red or white’ means that people follow Rinzai’s words and actions, that is, they are fooled by the illusions of him when he reveals the true-Self with plausible words, or ordinary actions. ‘When I take them off and enter the phenomena of purity, students take a glance and rejoice in what they see’ means that Rinzai shows stillness by stopping speaking and moving for a while, and the students, deluded by the illusion of the stillness Rinzai showed, believe they have grasped his meaning and feel overjoyed. ‘When I take it off, they are stupefied, run about frantically beside themselves and say that I am naked’ implies that when Rinzai takes off the illusion of the stillness and reveals the true-Self in another way, the students, covered with confusion again, talk nonsense following the illusions he makes. Then, Rinzai says, “Do you know at all the one who puts on all of these robes?”, and then they realise that they have been deluded by the illusions Rinzai made.

Student: “What is the true-Self?”

Master: “It is also a robe.”

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

#zen #meditation #zenmeditation #enlightened #enlightenment #zenfools #photography

A. Thoughtlessness is one of the most misunderstood or misinterpreted words in Buddhism. It can be classified into two different types; one before enlightenment and one after enlightenment. The first type, before enlightenment, can be experienced when we are lost in concentration during practise. As you said, it is true that during thoughtlessness we cannot realise this, because recognising it as thoughtlessness is no other than a thought itself. When we look back upon this afterwards, we can realise that it was thoughtlessness.

However, such thoughtlessness is not the ultimate state of thoughtlessness symbolising enlightenment. Mistaking this for true thoughtlessness and clinging to it is referred to as staying in a den of ghosts. True thoughtlessness is not such an unconscious state free from thoughts but means that you are free to think whilst not being deluded or swayed by thoughts since you see them as empty. This is possible only when you can see and hear things as they are.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

#zen #meditation #zenmeditation #enlightened #enlightenment #zenfools #photography