Such openness! Such a “no one special” approach to sharing the most important moments of one’s life, makes this a most charming chapter from the volume of this master’s journey to freedom. Being closer to our own time, the language is easy to fall into step with and grasp.

As long as there's no stopping place, even in practice, where is the need for labeling what level of enlightenment is achieved? Who is doing all this achieving anyway? The hardest practice is real life without any teacher, group, or nourishing temple to remind you of what you're doing here.

While the mirror is a familiar image used in Zen, the Platform Sutra by Hui-neng is the most famous illustration of how widely differently this idea can be taken.

With any spiritual discussion, there is always a point where you just can't understand because the very faculty trying to grasp it all is standing in the way. So what do you do at that point? Relax, sit back, and know that it is there for you somehow.

Most of us are well aware that the truth cannot be experienced by just reading sacred writings, however, lest we swing into extremes, as we are sometimes known to do, they still have their purpose. From the very first line though, the encouragement to “stainless learning” means … what exactly?

While the sutras are numerous and many have never been translated, what we do have access to can be challenging to understand. The lore surrounding the Lankavatara Sutra is that when Bodhidharma chose his successor Hui-k’o, he gave him a copy of the Lanka sutra and told him all he needed to know was in it.

Some of the Zen masters may sound harsh at times; their actions can seem confounding, but for some it takes a big message to break through the attachment to self.  This truly is one of the biggest hurdles we encounter in practice, so subtle as to actually fool us into thinking “ah, now I really understand at last!”

What little we know of him sitting in front of the wall and not responding to Huike until he took extreme measures to show his sincerity indicates someone of profound depth and experience. When compared with other translations one wonders if the entirety of this is from him or later accruals.

As seemingly difficult as some passages above are to comprehend, the method elucidated is clear and the “goal” of training is set forth at the very beginning. Hung-jen was the fifth patriarch of Zen and the teacher Hui-neng studied with.

The vast number of sutras, many of which have not been translated, are overwhelming in considering where to begin. In Cave 17 of the Dunhuang caves more than 10,000 manuscripts have been discovered well preserved during 900 years in the dark, dry cave. Given the sheer enormity of the writings in Buddhism, it makes perfect sense to have someone attempt to essentialize the essence of the teachings for their students and future generations.

Each of Mahamati's questions requires time to absorb and appreciate the Buddha's response. In essence, they are the universal questions of life here and now, but the answers are addressed to a bodhisattva rather than a beginner practitioner. One can assume he is asking for the benefit of the practitioners present listening to the exchange.

Sometimes describing what something is relies more on describing what it is not. In Vedanta and Jnana yoga neti neti, not this, not that, is part of their meditative practice which helps to discard attachment to any number of places where a practitioner can get stuck thinking they've finally arrived, when indeed there is more ground to cover.

This sums up the crux of a meaningful koan for us today.  How we get there is truly up to each one of us, and each person has their own unique pathway.

Right action is one principle of the Eightfold Noble path in Buddhism. These are inspiring guidelines for a life of practice, however, lest we leave it as only pertaining to actions of “goodness,” it may leave us wondering at times what exactly is the right action in certain circumstances.

In this chapter on practice, Chih I covers a tremendous amount of territory. With a simple name like stop-look Zen meditation, we are introduced to a short-hand view of this technique. The straightforward reasons for practice are all ones we can relate to, and perhaps a few are a bit surprising to consider as reasons to practice meditation.

We have all asked questions of a teacher and kept on asking without pausing to experience the answer.  It is like having a greed for views where there is this insatiable drive to collect answers without discovering anything for oneself.

Here we have a reading that encourages us to raise this doubt mass. This term alone causes one to wonder what is this "doubt" they are talking about. Even exploring "What is it?" as a starting point is not a bad place to begin.

These are questions many practitioners also have asked when confronted with yet another initiation requiring the fulfillment of new vows. Or the thought of a complex visualization one is asked to engage in with meditation practice. With the many offshoots of Buddhism have appeared many new requirements, retreats, and prostrations.

There are difficulties that rely on the faithfulness of the translators themselves and then the emphasis contemporary schools place on different aspects of Buddhism that create the unique flavor of each school.

In times like these where anger, greed, and delusion seem to have total sway over people’s consciousness, it is quite a reach to feel sincerely that all beings are in the process of becoming buddhas. The ultimate stretch of our faith in the Way is just this. However, the process is right in our own laps.

The lovely paradox of right intention in practice....who is not mystified by Great Enlightenment?  And yet we are advised, the more we seek it, the more illusive it becomes.  So, out of the corner of our consciousness, we peek from time to time, wondering, even so, where, exactly, and when is this Great Enlightenment?  The maxim we hear in practice "Great effort, no goal" approximates the attitude of right intention.  What a generous discourse on Great Enlightenment Dogen shares with us!

No matter how many years we have practiced, or if we are just discovering a way to practice, we can maintain beginner's mind. Beginner's mind is that state before we know too much, before we can explain principles to anyone else, where everything is fresh and unexplored and full of wonder.

Being a passive participant easily leads to a mindless outcome, and that is not the good kind of mindless we look at in practice.