In the enlightenment cycle, attention is paid to bringing back the awareness field from other lives. This does not simply mean memory, but rather the internal power and intelligence that you have amassed in other lifetimes.
Meditation will bring back the powers and awareness from the past; more importantly, it will expand your consciousness today.
The Zen master walks in his garden, alone. There is no traffic there. There is no shopping there. There are only the flowers.
A master of an art is someone who's been mastered by the art. They've become so one with what they teach that you can't tell the teacher from the student.
A Zen master is someone whose life is one with enlightenment and self-discovery. They can never be separated from that. They've been essentially mastered by Zen.
The way of Zen is to become independent and strong. Don't rely on others for perceptions of life and truth. Do it individually. Go to a teacher of Zen to learn how to do that, not to get answers for individual life situations.
The Zen master can see precisely what it will take to cause your awareness to become free. But the Zen master can't do it for you.
In Zen, and in other forms of self discovery, we do have a transference that occurs where psychically, information, blocks of attention, are transferred to the student.
The majority of the ten thousand states of mind cannot be discussed. It is rather a question of teaching a person to step outside the conceptual framework they have and transmitting blocks of awareness to an individual psychically.
We throw you as many as you want, in this profession, and the more you want the more we'll give you, until you're so confused that you'll just beg for us to stop. Stop what? You're the one who started it - you're doing it anyway.
The teaching of the ten thousand states of mind, particularly as one advances further, is done through transmission. This is where we differ from teaching algebra or calculus.
We call it the transmission of the lamp in Zen. That's when we take enlightened states of mind and literally, you can transfer them, just like you can hand somebody flowers.
In Old Zen, the Zen Master would do literally anything to break down the concept of what the study was. He would present conflicting codes all the time, just to shake this fixation people had on how to attain liberation.
The Zen Master was constantly attempting to break up concepts that people had about what it was like to be a spiritual teacher. We have a traditional image. Each Zen master was a complete character.
There is really only one Zen Master ... and that's yourself.
You're not listening to the Zen master, what he is saying outwardly, but even more importantly...what he is saying inwardly.
If the Zen master sees that it will cause a person to progress, he will ask that person to do a task. The task is charged with power if it's performed properly. It's a koan between yourself and the Zen Master.
In the advanced practice, the relationship between the Zen master and the student becomes very terse. The Zen master will expect things of the student because the student is in graduate school.
The teacher is transmitting pure awareness and consciousness.
Chi is developed through meditation, through studying with one who has a great deal of it.
Zen is not a religion. There is no room for a cult. There is no dependence on a teacher. There is only learning how to use your own mind and making it strong.
Find a teacher of Tantric Zen and study with them because it is transference of awareness, a sharing of the perception of the beauty of life.
In Zen we have no gurus.
The outer form of Buddhism, of practice, is etiquette - a series of ways to live intelligently that keep you alive, awake and happy, wakeful.
Etiquette is an intelligent way to live. There are certain ways of living you will learn being around advanced students and mostly your teacher. These are methods that have been handed down for thousands of years.
