"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

"What makes us miserable, what causes us to be in conflict with one another, is our insistence on our particular view of things: our view of what we deserve or want, our view of right and wrong, our view of self, our view of other, our view of life, our view of death. But views are just views. They are not ultimate truth. There is no way to eliminate views, nor would we want to. As long as we are alive and aware there will be views. Views are colorful and interesting and life-enhancing—as long as we know they are views. The Chinese Zen masters are asking us to know a view as a view, and not to mistake it for something else. If you know a view as a view, you can be free of that view. If you know a thought as a thought, you can be free of that thought.

Going beyond language through language is something we can practice and develop through meditation, study, and awareness in daily life. In meditation we can learn to pay attention not only to sensation but also to emotion and thinking. Learning to let thinking come and go, we can eventually understand a thought as a thought and a word as a word, and with this understanding we can find a measure of freedom from thoughts and words."

Beyond language: finding freedom through thoughts and words - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Summer 2011

"We cannot be the experience we perceive. This means we are not our thoughts, emotions, states of mind, physical sensations or sense data."

Awakening: a paradigm shift of the heart - p. 201

"Thoughts are our attempt to estabilish companionship in an otherwise empty universe. Like hearing the echo bounce off canyon walls, we keep self-speaking to assure ourselves that we exist and others exist with us.

Form can never release us from this separation because by definition it must be distinct from everything else to remain as form. To live in form means we will be distant and alone, governed by time. We try to use words to reconnect to other objects, but in the end the words do little to cross the great divide."

Awakening: a paradigm shift of the heart - p. 32

"If you distilled out all the internal contents of your consciousness, including all thoughts and states of mind, you would again come to that same refined and simple state of being. This unprocessed sense of aliveness, both inside and out, is formless awareness."

Awakening: a paradigm shift of the heart - p. 148

"The person is a product of the mind, not the other way around, and the incessant mind chatter has to be maintained for the person to believe he or she is outside looking in. We know ourselves only by making mental noise, and if the mind gets quiet, this false dichotomy of "me" separate from "my" mental experience cannot be maintained.

The concept of "I" is another thought coming from the mind.

When we actually look inwardly with awareness to see this "I", we see only thought, emotion, and memory. There is no entity apart from these thoughts.

The thoughts of the brain and the sense of I are one and the same thing.

Over time these mental functions assumed themselves to be a person.

The person who was just created out of thought now became the person outside of the brain having the thought."

Awakening: a paradigm shift of the heart - p. 43-45

"Thought gives substance to all things but does not impart essence to anything. The essence of all things is formless awareness, and nothing exists except that the formless makes it so."

Awakening: a paradigm shift of the heart - p. 35

"We usually grasp at whatever occurs. For instance, when sadness arises, we hold on to this feeling and think, “I am so sad, I am so depressed.” But from the Mahamudra point of view, what has happened? A feeling has arisen in the mind, like a cloud. Like a cloud, it appears and then it disappears, and that’s all there is to it. This time it is sadness arising, the next time it may be happiness, the next time it may be anger, and later it may be kindness. All sorts of things arise, like wildflowers in a spring meadow. All sorts of flowers grow; all sorts of thoughts and emotions arise. They are all okay; they’re nothing special. When we understand what our thoughts and feelings are, and we experience them in this way, we are able to let them come and let them go."

Confusion Arises as Wisdom - p. 122

"The past and the future are obviously thought created, since all remnants of what has been or what will be cannot be found except through rumination.

Nothing could possibly be outside Now because it is the only place life can occur.

The closer we move into Now, the more spontaneously awareness arises, until finally we see that full awareness and Now are one and the same."

Stepping out of self-deception - p. 216, 217

"We" do not have a mind. The mind has created the sense of "you" and "me" from the way it perceives reality. "We" are a part of the mental processing of the mind. The thoughts of the mind and the sense-of-I are not two separate events. We exist only because the mind thinks us into creation.

Stepping out of self-deception - p. 166

"Stop trying to be mindful and relax into the awareness that existed before thought, and not the mindfulness that existed driven by thought."

Stepping out of self-deception - p. 164

"Thought holds an alternative to what is. Thought says, "This doesn't have to be this way, other possibilities would improve this situation." Thinking forms a horizontal view that is constructed from the endless choices conceived by the mind, and we invest in the truth of those possibilities as a way out of Now. But reality does not hold a substitute for Now; there is only what is. In order to surrender, we have to see the choices offered by thought as pure fabrication. When we perceive the unreality of thought, the view and sense-of-self constructed from these thoughts end. Surrender is the collapsing of alternatives into reality."

Stepping out of self-deception - p. 126

"Thought is often a reaction to an emotion and is an attempt to justify the experience of an emotion.

The thinking is trying to solve the emotion, but the emotion is unconscious, so the thinking continues to spin out of control. An emotion is not caused by an external event; the mind assigns an emotion to an external event. The confusion is resolved when we focus on the emotion and let it be what it is, while at the same time releasing the need to think our way out of the emotion."

Stepping out of self-deception - p. 55

"Sitting zazen, you really become intimate with the limitations of language, of narrative, of thought itself. With every thought there’s a “Yes, but....” With every idea comes another idea. This is the labyrinth of thought. Ultimately, you realize that “truth” is not to be found in words."

No words - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Winter 2009

"There is no thinker behind the thought. Thought itself is the thinker. If you remove the thought, there is no thinker to be found."

What the Buddha taught - p.26