Practice zazen as if your hair were on fire. When we sit, we cannot be thinking about yesterday’s actions or tomorrow’s plans. When we while away the time doing this, we are not sitting, but thinking. Sitting should be performed like any other action, we should be consumed by it, so that the thoughts drop … Continue reading Absolute
Tag: Thinking
Thought
We have all experienced that one moment of pure clarity of mind, even if we can only see it retrospectively. It might have been when we were in a foreign country, driving on the other side of the road, through a busy city. It may have been when hanging over the precipiceof a mountain rock … Continue reading Thought
Why do you sit?
This is a question many non-sitting people ask and a question difficult to answer. When sitting, no words are required, no explanation, no thinking, so to have to articulate why makes matters hard. When speaking to people who have never sat zazen, my answer varies, but the core is always the same. When I take … Continue reading Why do you sit?
Do you mind?
Where do we go when we close our eyes? We still can see, but we don't see - our sense of sight shuts off and the longer our eyes are closed the further we drift away into unconsciousness, and eventually sleep. What happens to our thinking mind? There are other occasions too. When we are … Continue reading Do you mind?
Moving mountains
The ‘accidental miracle’ that brought each and every one of us into being, the process of chance meetings and love affairs, embryos born from the earth, fed star dust in the womb, growing into a physical human from a collection of fluid particles – this being we are, made from constituent parts of the universe, … Continue reading Moving mountains
Mind-Body
Mind-Body We cannot separate mind from body nor body from mind in this realm within which we dwell. When we are hungry we feel it in both, just as when we are angry our mind flares with the emotion as our heart race quickens and our stomachs clench. When we train our bodies, we train … Continue reading Mind-Body
The quick of life
What makes a man? Is it his mind, his thoughts? If we took away his capacity for thought, would he still be a man? And what when we're asleep? Are dreams our thoughts, or does the mind rest? Either way we are not thinking as we do when awake, yet we continue to exist. What … Continue reading The quick of life
Zen musings 