Quotes from the patriarchs of zen

Authentic reality, holiness, vulgarity,
Are but words in a dream.
Buddha and sentient beings, random forms.
When you are here,
Bring your light inward,
Illuminate the surroundings,
Open your hands and refuse nothing.

A silent coincidence is enough for this.

It is because the root of your faith is insignificant that the vague desire to pack your bags and hit the road to wander in distant places appears in your mind.

However deep our knowledge of abstruse ideas may be, it is like a hair in the immensity of the void.
However great our experience of the things of this world may be, it is like a drop thrown into an unfathomable abyss.

Through thought without thought,
Direct your attention inward,
In order to examine the divine spark.
When your thought can go no further,
It returns to the source, where nature and form, noumenon and phenomenon, are not two but one.

Ears become deaf,
Eyes blind.
In the midnight void,
The body is lost.

Clear mirror of the free mind in all reflections,
Full light of the void in every grain of the universe,
To the ten thousand shadows of the exuberant multitude,
A pearl radiates in the oblivion of space.

The highest wisdom is without goal, without consciousness,
It can only be obtained unconsciously, naturally, automatically.

The homeless monk,
To discover the inalienable life,
Which is without comings and goings, this is the practice of the Way.
Then you will access the right view and your ego will no longer be a transient self but an eternal self.
As long as one does not awaken to this, it is useless to have been born in this world.

Strange indeed is the way that leads to the cold mountain.
No rut or hoofprint can be seen there.
The valleys wind as far as the eye can see, the peaks sparkle with dew and the pines murmur in the breeze.
Have you not yet understood? Reality asks the shadow for the way.

As in the mirror,
Form and reflection look at each other.
You are not the reflection,
But the reflection is you.

The meaning of my coming to the east was to transmit the way, a five-petaled flower blooms and the fruit will come of itself.

When we know that between this body and the Buddha there is no separation, what is the use of seeking nirvana?

The mind moves with the ten thousand things and even while moving it is serene; if you perceive its essence you will find neither joy nor sadness in it.

In ku, there is neither matter, nor perception, nor sensation, nor action, nor consciousness.
There is neither color, nor sound, nor smell, nor taste, nor touch, nor thought.
There is neither knowledge, nor ignorance, nor illusion, nor cessation of illusion.
There is neither birth, nor death, nor suffering, nor cessation of suffering.
There is neither profit, nor non-profit.

Your words and your mind are in a unity more intimate than father and mother, your actions and the way are in unity, such is the mind of the buddhas.

Lord, it would be good if you allowed women to enter the homeless life according to your teaching and your discipline.

I am the son of the blessed one, born from his mouth.

Be your own lamp, your only refuge.

Beauties turn into clouds and rain.
The river of the passion of love is deep.
A public woman and I, an adept of zen, sing at the top of a tower.

When discriminating thoughts are forgotten, it is like the white plume of reeds shining on the snow.

The way is round, perfect like the vast world without any notion of lack or superfluity.
In truth, it is because we want to choose or reject that we are not free.

Direct your light inward and turn around, the infinite and inconceivable source can neither be faced nor avoided.
Meet the old masters and be intimate with their teaching.
Tie grasses to build a hut and never give up.

The universe is nothing but the testimony of a single dharma.
What we see with forms is only the reflection of our mind.
The mind does not exist in itself, its existence is revealed through forms.

The deluded mind turns around the lotus.
The illuminated mind makes the lotus turn around it.

A day without work, a day without eating.

If after five, ten, twenty years of practice you do not attain awakening, then cut off my head and make a urinal out of my skull.

— Have you eaten your rice soup?
— Yes.
— Then go wash your bowl.

For sixty-six years, my sins have filled the entire universe.
I have led this body to the highest.
It now descends back to hell.
Oh! I have nothing to express about life and death.

The way transmitted to the west, I transmitted it to the east fishing for the moon, plowing the clouds, I gathered the ancient flavor.

It is one and the same light that harmonizes into a whole the people of satori and those of illusion.

In vertical contact,
The three worlds become a single instant.
In horizontal contact,
The directions exist before our eyes.

In this living world,
The body that I abandon to the fire,
Would be miserable,
If I saw in myself anything else,
Than wood to burn.

What will I leave as a memory?
Flowers in spring,
The cuckoo in summer,
Maple leaves in autumn.

How can he smile so happily? Do not compare him to others, his worldliness is not of this world, his joy comes from his own nature.

The Universe is a brilliant pearl.

Invariably, master Tenryu raised his thumb,
Unifying heaven and earth,
Without separating east from west.
How laughable he is, Gutei!
Struck dumb,
His sex erect facing the moon.

For the bodhisattva, thanks to the wisdom that leads beyond, there is neither obstacle nor fear.
All illusion and all attachment are removed and he can grasp the ultimate end of life, nirvana.

The homeless monk, to discover the inalienable life which is without comings and goings, this is the practice of the Way.
Then, you will access the right view and your ego will no longer be a transient self, but an eternal self.
As long as one does not awaken to this, it is useless to have been born in this world.