Shunryu Suzuki
Shunryu Suzuki Quotes about World
So it is not a matter of whether it is possible to attain Buddhahood, or if it is possible to make a tile a jewel. But just to work, just to live in this world with this understanding is the most important point, and that is our practice. That is true zazen.
If you want to read a letter from the Buddha's world, it is necessary to understand Buddha's world.
When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world. When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world. The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless. We say "inner world" or "outer world" but actually, There is just one whole world.
In the Lotus Sutra, Buddha says to light up one corner - not the whole world. Just make it clear where you are.
In Zazen, in the practice of meditation, we do not try to escape from the world. We face it directly. By facing it directly, we can become completely immersed in it.
When you try to attain something, your mind starts to wander about somewhere else. When you do not try to attain anything, you have your own body and mind right here. In Buddhism it is a heretical view to expect something outside this world. We do not seek for something besides ourselves.
All descriptions of reality are limited expressions of the world of emptiness. Yet we attach to the descriptions and think they are reality. That is a mistake.
If you were not born in this world, there would be no need to die. To be born in this world is to die, to disappear [laughing].
Meditation opens the mind to the greatest mystery that takes place daily and hourly; it widens the heart so that it may feel the eternity of time and infinity of space in every throb; it gives us a life within the world as if we were moving about in paradise.
We ourselves cannot put any magic spells on this world. The world is its own magic.
Although we have no actual written communications from the world of emptiness, we have some hints or suggestions about what is going on in that world, and that is, you might say, enlightenment. When you see plum blossoms or hear the sound of a small stone hitting bamboo, that is a letter from the world of emptiness.
The world is its own magic.