as-it-is, blue as blue, white as white ( my favorite quote )

On one of my nyoi ( Kotsu, shippei, the zen teaching stick with a mushroom-like shape), carved by Ron in Forest Row,

written by Marikosan's brush stroke:

青山自青山、白雲自白雲
"The blue mountains are of themselves blue mountains;
"The white clouds are of themselves white clouds."

Zenrin Kushu

Flushed !!!

Many questions are dropped. In my limited experience, zazen exhausts both questions and answers, or if you wish, the need, the urge to be given a map to go and live. When and are dropped, we are taken back home, which is exactly here and now, a place we never leave. Then our being-time -here-and- now is a living question and answer. Action takes place and arises in this dynamic reality which is not anymore perceived or grasped through fears or hopes. Eating, we eat. Living, we live. Sleeping, we sleep. Or, if I put it another way, zazen is a way to redirect the flow of questions to very source of our being-time, you actualize the fact that the answers are not anymore over there in books, traditions, teachings but that you are the answer to all the questions you ask. Questions do not beg for an answer but are seen and experienced as a way to wake up to this reality without necessarily putting your paws on any definite answer. A way to wonder, not to wander. It is true that then the whole universe, from toilels to kitchen, work and family and friends and things become the living questions put to us.

Buddha has many forms and yet none

A broad mind contains mountains, rivers, blossoms and cities of glass and steel

The robe sewn is beyond praise or blame

Sadly teachers of great lineages disown and reject their own blood and others

In the name what we call the truth

The poison of religion runs easily in our veins

Wisdom and Emptiness cultivated without Compassion

Take us to a blind and arrogant field

May I be ordinary

simple

plain

just

me