Great Foyan Quotes

Here's some quotes I saved for the community while rereading Instant Zen yesterday. Feel free to comment and enjoy!

Wishing to get out of birth and death, wishing to attain release, you try to become unified; but one does not attain unification after becoming homogenized.

Does this mean that you will realize it if you do not aim the mind and do not develop intellectual understanding? Far from it— you will fail even more seriously to realize it.

Changsha one day turned around and saw the icon of wisdom, whereupon he suddenly realized the ultimate and said, “Turning around, I suddenly see the original body. The original body is not a perception or a reality; if you consider the original being to be the same as the real being, you will suffer hardship forever.”

If you seek a state of emancipation, this is what is called a cramp!

There is not much to Buddhism; it only requires you to see the way clearly. It does not tell you to extinguish random thoughts anci suppress body and mind, shutting your eyes and saying “This is It!” The matter is not like this.

Did not one of the Patriarchs say, “Freedom from thoughts is the source, freedom from appearances is the substance”? If you just shout and clap, when will you ever be done?

You people either interpret literally or else fall into conventional echoes of what is said. If you don’t fall into echolike expressions, then you fall into wordlessness and speechlessness.

Do you know that activity is the root of suffering, sustained by the power of wind?

I also asked if Zen is ultimately easy to learn or hard to learn. He just told me, “You’re alright; why are you asking about difficulty and ease? Learning Zen is called a gold and dung phenomenon. Before you understand it, it’s like gold; when understood, it’s like dung.” I didn’t accept this at the time, but now that I’ve thought it over, although the words are coarse the message in them is not shallow.

One verse from Foyan's teacher:

There is a road to emptiness;/everyone arrives. Those who arrive then realize/the excellence of the aim./The mind ground does not grow/useless plants and trees;/naturally the body spontaneously/radiates clear light.

...it is said, “The objective is defined based on the subjective; since the objective is arbitrarily defined, it produces your arbitrary subjectivity, producing difference where there was neither sameness nor difference."

It is necessary to attain the reality where there is no delusion and no enlightenment before you can become free and unfettered.

There is nothing in my experience that is not true. If there were anything at all untrue, how could I presume to tell others, how could I presume to guide others? When I affirm my truth, there is no affirming mind and no affirmed objects; that is why I dare tell people.

One must be like thirty tons of iron, which cannot be pulled forward or pushed back—only then do you know it’s the real thing. People like you stir the minute you’re shaken by someone; one more push, and you tumble.

It is also said, “At the time of initial inspiration one attains true enlightenment,” meaning first realize the fruit, and the six perfections and myriad deeds of Buddhas are a matter of ripening. This is why I have you just investigate the initially inspired mind.

Have you not read how someone once clapped his hands and laughed on hearing a signal sounded, saying, “ I understand! I understand!” Is this not following principle to learn?

Submitted September 04, 2020 at 06:19PM by surupamaerl https://ift.tt/354lHIo