"This is Zen’s fundamental point. In our essence of mind, mountains are simply mountains, flowers are flowers, and the sound of the wind is the sound of the wind. We hear, we see, and we leave each thing as we hear or see it, adding nothing at all to it.

Everything in nature has a physical body, yet a rock doesn’t call itself a rock or a flower call itself a flower. Only humans are stuck on how they are or should be. The healthiest way of being is to have no need to explain our being, but for it  to manifest naturally. We get stuck because we feel a need to explain.

Nonthought does not mean not to think; it means not to be carried away by any particular idea.

The purpose of Zen is not to become people who don’t think, but to think only what we we need to; not to be lost in unnecessary thoughts, but to see what is most necessary right now. If we cook rice, we have to think about how much to cook and how to do it the best way. If we are chopping wood, we have to think about the best way to chop, or if we grow vegetables, we have to think about the best way to cultivate them. 

Don’t think about extra things, but live totally embracing just what comes to you, not carrying thoughts about the past or wondering what’s going to happen in the future. [...] We miss the present when we carry around these kinds of thoughts. Live this moment fully in the most appropriate way."

Finding Our Essence of Mind - Shodo Harada Roshi - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Spring 2018

"Buddhist teachings remind us that we will never achieve real or lasting satisfaction by adopting a different, better way of thinking or acting. The effort to find happiness in this way may bring relief from the more extreme forms of anxiety to which the personality is subject, but it is nonetheless based on an endlessly replicating fantasy charged by an unquenchable, obsessive thirst that serves only to perpetuate the ego’s compulsive activity and its attendant suffering. This is the very definition of bondage to karma, the engine of a chronic existential disease. The insatiable yearning to analyze and discriminate, judge and choose — and thereby to control or shape the self in the image of its constantly shifting desires — is the elemental force of dukkha in its most basic form. It is the inescapable plight of the self.

This brings us to the central concern of Theravada Buddhism, and to mindfulness meditation as the primary means for stepping away from the whole project of searching for happiness by judging and choosing, rejecting some things while accepting others.

As practiced in the traditional Buddhist context, mindfulness is not a powerful, spiritualized form of psychotherapy, a device for fine-tuning the ego — much less a strategy for achieving “complete and invulnerable self-sufficiency.”

[...] mindfulness is not about becoming a happier, better person. It’s not about “happiness” at all — at least not if “happiness” is understood as the fulfillment of desire. Mindfulness is, rather, about wisdom rooted in insight, renunciation, and unqualified self-surrender."

Are You Looking to Buddhism When You Should Be Looking to Therapy? - C. W. Huntington, Jr - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Spring 2018

"Don’t recall. Let go of what has passed.
Don’t imagine. Let go of what may come.
Don’t think. Let go of what is happening now. 
Don’t examine. Don’t try to figure anything out. 
Don’t control. Don’t try to make anything happen. 
Rest. Relax, right now, and rest."

Tilopa's six nails - Repa Dorje Odzer - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Spring 2018

"Nibbana is not trying to get anywhere.

The attention rests in the pure space of knowing.

As we attend again and again to this pure space of knowing, our being starts to take root in the deathless. The purity of Buddha nature, free from afflictive formations, starts to become the baseline of our experience.

As we rest in the empty knowing, we see all the changing phenomena come and go.

As we tune in to empty awareness, we are linking to Buddha nature, which is of the same unconditioned nature as nibbana.

The most liberating view is not conceptual. Abiding in empty knowing is key, and it requires neither thoughts nor concepts nor philosophical views."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"Awareness seems very close to consciousness in that it holds sense experience, but perhaps there is also mindfulness since it seems somewhat intelligent.

Consciousness in this usage means the knowing of an individual sense object: sight, sound, and so forth.

Awareness is not quite locatable. It is not an object that can be taken hold of; awareness is what holds objects.

Awareness is the activity of knowing; mind is the thing that does the knowing."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"Consciousness conditions name-and-form and name-and-form conditions consciousness. This is circular.

Consciousness, or knowing, is the basic characteristic of mind. Its function is to know sense experience.

Everything that comes into our human experience is an appearance in consciousness."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"It is impossible to define nibbana through concepts, because words discriminate while the nature of nibbana transcends dualities.

Many Buddhist teachers agree that nibbana refers to a latent element within human experience that can be discovered and experienced. It is unconditioned in the sense that it is not subject to arising and passing based on other, prior conditions. The direct realization of this unconditioned element has the power to end craving and suffering. This is the goal of the Buddha's teaching and of our practice. We will take nibbana to mean both this latent unconditioned element and the end of suffering, which is the goal of the path.

The six senses cease to manifest anything, so there is no sense of a body or even of mind states.

What is being realized in this moment is only the unconditioned element, nibbana, which is not of the six senses and cannot be known by the six sense consciousnesses. This is a moment of enlightenment. The great Zen master Dogen referred to this experience as 'dropping off body and mind'.

Enlightenment experiences are described as having no awareness present at all or having the presence of an awareness that is not based in the six senses."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"Every form of suffering arises from an over-involved relationship with sense objects.

Don't add to reality. What is, is. Let it be. What isn't, isn't. Don't create more.

What is revealed when we see things as they are is their impermanent, selfless nature, which makes them incapable of giving lasting satisfaction. Knowing their unsatisfactory nature, we lose our our fascination with the conditioned realm of sense objects.

Disenchantment with the world of the senses should not be confused with cynicism or withdrawal. It simply means 'being freed from illusion'.

We are no longer enchanted by the false promises of sense objects, which for years we had hoped might offer lasting happiness."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"The true fruition of spiritual life is to end the cycle of becoming.

The awakened being comes to the end of becoming."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"Enlightment is understood as a direct realization of the unconditioned or, one might say, an immediate personal experience of nibbana."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators