Don’t light a lamp—there’s no oil in the house.It’s a shame to want a light.I have a way to bless poverty:Just feel your way along the wall.Yinyuan Longqi

Blessed are the poor, for their's is the realm of God"Jesus

A few years ago, I took lessons in West African Drumming...

This primary intuition of the strangeness of it all, of our single selves as unspeakably fragile and brilliant observers of a grandeur for which we have tried through all our generations to find words, this is the experience that seems to me to underlie religion
-- Mar...

Layman Pang was once selling bamboo baskets. Coming down off a bridge, he stumbled and fell. When his daughter, Lingzhao, saw this she ran to her father’s side and threw herself down.
“What are you doing?” cried the Layman.
“I saw Daddy fall to the ground, so I’m helpi...

Wherever you are, just take the role of host, and that place will be a true place.  --Linji  

Sometimes I feel like I was raised by wolves, outside of what humans know, exiled from a world of convention, the world of human invention, houses, cars, the Rotarians. Th...

“Stop the sound of the distant temple bell.” --Zen Koan

Often it seems as if life is an ordeal, even a punishment, to be endured. SomeTHING outside of myself seems relentless in its assault. As a child someone is teasing and we cry to some adult - Make him stop!  Or the...

A student asked Zhaozhou, “Does a dog have Buddha nature or not?  Zhaozhou answered, “No!”
 
On a regular basis I have people asking me “what is a koan and how do I use it?” That seems to be one of those questions that has an endless stream of answers.
 

Life meets Life

...

Continuously renewed immediacy, not receding memory of the Divine Touch, lies at the base of religious living. Let us explore together the secret of a deeper devotion, a more subterranean sanctuary of the soul, where the Light Within never fades, but burns, a perpetual...

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with b...

The koan:
What is the heart-mind of the ancient buddha?
Flowing grasses. Forests of many colors. 

As the sun rises, and the bird calls. the ancient buddha.
Sensing the smell of the fresh rain on the grass, the ancient buddha.
As the hawk swoops down on her prey, the anc...

The koan:
 A student said to Yunmen, "The light serenely illumines the whole universe..."
before he had finished Yunmen interrrupted him, "Aren't those Zhangzhou's words?
The student said, "Yes they are."
Yunmen said, "You have misspoken."

Later, the teacher Sixin too...