A. Master: “Live in the land without light and shade.”
Student: “Where is the land?”
Master: “There.”
Student: “Where is there?”
Master: “There.”
Commentary:
You don’t have to dig the earth for gold with your hands full of gold.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
A. Master: “What do you think it is?”
Student: “I have no idea.”
Master: “You are right.”
Commentary:
Master opens the shell and offers the flesh.
Why do you try in vain to eat only the hard shell?
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
A. Remove all your time lines. They are only imaginary lines created by your imagination. There is no fixed time in the universe. Time is a typical illusion. Remove all time lines and you will become eternity itself. Think of eternity as your practice and you will become practice itself. Then, whatever you may do, whether eating, talking, or working, just question what makes your body do it. That is practice. In other words, you make yourself one with the question or your practice. Then, you can practise 24-hours a day 7-days a week. You can’t stop practising.
Student: “What is the best way to practise well?”
Master: “Don’t practise.”
Student: “Why do you tell me not to practise when I ask you the best way to practise?”
Master: “If you practise 24-hours a day, your practice is not practice any longer. That is true practice.”
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
A. The words ‘only humans can attain enlightenment’ have the same meaning as ‘only you can attain enlightenment’. This doesn’t mean that you are superior to others but that no one else can take the place of you in both attaining enlightenment and getting the whole world enlightened. In other words, only when you yourself are enlightened can you have all other things including other animals enlightened.
We can’t realise the truth that humans are one with and not separate from other things such as plants and animals or the living and the non-living, until we attain enlightenment. It is said that once you attain enlightenment, all the universe attains enlightenment as well at the same time. That is, you can have a firm belief that we are not separate from other animals and that everything is one, only when you can see things as they are. Even if all other people of the world should get enlightened, their enlightenment can never allow you to enjoy the truth that everything including you is perfectly one, as long as you stay unenlightened.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
A. Master: “It feels full after eating hearty food.
Student: “I feel that, too.”
Master: “That’s it.”
Student: “I still don’t know.”
Master: “Not knowing is not wrong.”
Commentary:
Don’t go to beg your neighbours for embers for cooking with a lamp in your hand.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
A. The point is not whether to break up or not, but whether you forgave him or not. True forgiveness brings peace and happiness to the forgiver as well as to those who are forgiven.
Ask yourself if you really forgave your husband. Are you sure that you forgave him? If you are not sure, ask yourself whether or not you happen to have any concerns about his unfaithfulness and your forgiveness in your mind, or feel that you did something very big for him and that he should be grateful to you for your forgiveness and recompense you for it. If you think even a little in this way, your forgiveness is not forgiveness at all but a penalty wrapped in the sweet-sounding word ‘forgiveness’. You actually didn’t forgive him but are demanding reparation for your suffering.
In Zen, forgiveness means to regard your husband’s affair as empty and think that there is nothing to forgive him for, and to realise that even your forgiveness is empty as well. If you can’t forgive him like this, try to see the situation as empty. Your effort to see your situation as empty will make your life peaceful and stable regardless of your husband’s reaction to your endeavour.
Don’t expect a quick reaction from him. A sick person usually takes time to return to what he was after his disease is cured. Likewise, it might take time for him to return to what he was because he still needs more time to forgive himself.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
A. Master: “A word”
Student: “Where is it?”
Master: “In your mouth”
Commentary:
It cooks, and chats.
It brings peace, and causes troubles.
It makes the light and the darkness.
It does all these things.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
A. It is not that God doesn’t listen to you, but that you are deaf to him because you are involved in listening to only your familiar noises. It is not that he hides himself from you, but that you are blind to him since you are preoccupied in keeping company only with familiar figures. He sometimes whispers and sometimes shouts. He sometimes shakes you, from time to time pushes you and once in a while pulls you. It is not God but you that are to blame for not receiving help from him. If you can cut off all images and names, his voice and figure will sound and look clear to you.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
A. Master: “A room”
Commentary:
To take you out of a room is not difficult.
However, it is very difficult to take the room out of you.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
A. It’s a very common feeling that you can experience during practice. Whatever scenes and whatever emotions, good or bad, neither avoid nor follow them. They are all illusions. Just try to trace them back to the root from which they come. The purpose of Zen meditation is to realise what the root of all illusions is. It is because you are making a little progress that you have such feelings. From now on, do think of them as a gate to the final goal, your true-self, and your practice will make big progress.
Student: “Sir, I feel fear during my practice.”
Master: “That is an action of your true-self.”
Student: “You said that fear is an illusion.”
Master: “It is when you don’t know that fear is an action of your true-self that it is an illusion.”
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Zen Fools 