Zen by Tim Freke ...

Zen made easy
by Timothy Freke

Greetings folks,

Picked up this handy little volume on sale in Aug 2002 ... ISBN 0-8069-9921-7

Here's a few random slices from the first couple of times I opened it ...

Page 30 'A finger pointing at the moon':

Zen is not a religious doctrine passed from generation to generation. It is a living experience of life itself of which the traditional teachings are a faint echo. Zen teachings are often compared to a finger pointing at the moon. The finger is not the moon, and the teachings are not Zen. They gesture towards something ineffable and ultimately completely incommunicable. To see the moon it is necessary to stop looking at the pointing finger. Likewise, Zen teachings are only finally understood when they are abandoned.

Zen teaches nothing. Whatever teachings there are in Zen, they come out of one's own mind. We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way
- D.T. Suzuki

Page 72 'Mission Impossible':

Zen encourages us to undergo strenuous spiritual practices to help us see through the illusion of separateness and experience enlightenment. Yet it also teaches that enlightenment can actually only occur spontaneously, and believing we are doing something, even spiritual practices, only endorse the false idea of the ego.

We are caught in a "Catch-22" situation. We need to free ourselves from the illusion of being a separate self. What can we do? The idea that there is a "someone" to do anything about the problem is the problem itself! Does Zen have a solution for this impossible dilemma? Mu!

Meditation doesn't work: One day, Master Huai Jang asked a student who was practising meditation, "What are you doing?" The student replied, "Trying to be a Buddha." Huai Jang picked up a stone and began rubbing it. "What are you doing?" asked the student. Huai Jang answered, "I am trying to make a mirror." The astonished student told him, "No amount of polishing will make a stone a mirror." Huai Jang commented wryly, "No amount of meditation will make you a Buddha."

Dreaming that you've woken up: "Trying to get rid of habitual states of mind without having seen into your own nature is like trying to get rid of a dream while asleep. The desire to dispel the dream is just part of the dream. Knowing that it is a dream is also just part of the dream. It doesn't matter how much you search for something in a dream, you will never find it." - Bassui

Mu!

Master Ekai meditated on a koan for six years, until one day he heard the monastery drum and was spontaneously enlightened. This koan was the exclamation "Mu!", which literally means "Not!" Ekai would often simply shout "Mu!" in reply to his students' questions as a way of pointing to an answer beyond the logical mind. "Mu!" declares "Anything you can think is not the answer." "Mu!" demands "Abandon your question and directly experience What-is."

Crazy Wisdom:

Zen masters are renowned for their bizarre behaviour. But although the Zen masters may seem irrational, Zen obeys its own logic. Their aberrant actions graphically illustrate Zen teachings in a way that words cannot. Their eccentricities exemplify a way of being that is spontaneous and unconditioned.

{May type a bit more of this section at some stage}

{Kinda reminds me of that wonderful Dharma the cat cartoon ...

Click :)}

They also had a photo of a soapstone statue of Bodhidarma, the founder of Zen

A Life and Death Situation:

The inner peace sought by Zen meditators is not the comforting dullness of sleep, but the super-awakeness of being completely present. Sometimes the alertness necessary is compared to that of someone facing a life and death situation. Or to having the most fascinationg thought you've ever had - only without the thought!

Imagine hanging from a cliff-face and you will know the alertness of Zen mind.

{There was a great image of a rock-climber to illustrate the point... I may scan it ... or find something similar out there on the world-wide-web ...}

Well, here's one set ... click here or here ... or here ... or here ...