"When understood, the Buddha’s universe..is anything but alien and inhibiting. It is a world full of hope, where everything we need to do can be done and everything that matters is within human reach. It is a world where kindness, unselfishness, non-violence, and compassion achieve what self-interest and arrogance cannot. It is a world where any human can be happy in goodness and the fullness of giving." ❦ Eknath Easwara

October 23, 2011

Zen - It's Not About Finally Getting all the Cookies!


"Most people who come to the Zen Center don't think a Cadillac will do it, but they think that enlightenment will.  Now they've got a new cookie, a new "if only."  "If only I could understand what realization is all about, I would be happy."  "If only I could have at least a little enlightenment experience, I would be happy."

Coming into a practice like Zen, we bring our usual notions that we are going to get somewhere--become enlightened—and get all the cookies that have eluded us in the past.

Our whole life consists of this little subject looking outside itself for an object.  But if you take something that is limited, like body and mind, and look for something outside it, that something becomes an object and must be limited too.  So you have something limited looking for something limited and you just end up with more of the same folly that has made you miserable."

Charlotte Joko Beck

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