Presentation of the book by the monk Kosen

The zen apprenticeship resembles to guerilla: a small part of ourselves takes to the maquis to struggle against the corrupted power, greedy and liar, which leads our inner life. This struggle appears to be hopeless but we still undertake it and , with some know-how, a lot of tenacity, some people have succeeded and have liberated themselves from themselves.

The zen I am talking about is not the apprenticeship of a meditation, it is a shelter that man owns from ever, a shelter of peace and happiness which springs out instantaneously as soon as we practice it. All the human beings, whoever they are, are capable to obtain this treasure, and even if they practice only during a single day, even if they sit in the posture only a short instant, that will have an incidence and will irremediably transform their existence. We discover quite simple things, but still extraordinary ones, like for example the feeling of life. Everybody get this feeling, so intimate that it seems to us eternal, immortal. We do not get the impression that this strength of living can disappear, even with death.

Would it not be that, the buddha's nature? To discover it is not more complicated than that. We often believe that the extraordinary things are not accessible. I think that originally the world is the paradise, the promised land, that the human vocation is to be the visible side of God. Even the extraordinary works in a very simple way. Removing complications, parasites, pollution, this is enough for the evidence to show up. The evidence has not been invented by somebody. Buddha himself did not invent the evidence, neither any prophet, nor any revolutionary. They only knew sometimes how to perceive it".

Answer of the monk Kosen to the question "What is zen?" asked during an interview at the Spanish national radio in June 1997.

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