The student must struggle through years of external work before they can even contemplate commencing internal work. Think of Milarepa, repeatedly building then dismantling the stone temple for 12 years before he was ready to meditate.

Life is a long lesson in humility.

imagine a bunch of energy filaments exiting the mingmen
grab them and draw them around to your dantien
this is one version of our first warm-up exercise

plumb the depths

tip of the tongue on the roof of the mouth allows the jaw to relax without drooling

Knowledge and opinion amount to the same thing: tension that prevents us from releasing into who we really are.

It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that everything in Chan (Zen) revolves around the patriarchal lineage.

spirit is a spark that wakes us from the slumber of self-absorption

feel your weight as a fullness that rises from the ground

the patience of a nature lover

It is not the teacher's job to please the student but to wake them up – draw them out of their complacent slumber. So the last thing the teacher wants are smiles and nods of agreement, but looks of shock and discomfort if not outright terror.

Nature is first a pageant to us, and then a process; until at last we perceive it to be, in Goethe’s words, the “garment of God” — and withal, the enveloping mantle of man.

the measure of softness is in the touch
the ease and grace with which we slip through the air

responding to touch

quiet & quick

Head is overactive because heart is underactive. (Worry is never an expression of love.) Heart, more than anything, trusts. Head hedges (its bets). Heart is the site of unconditionality. Head qualifies everything.

I am everything because I am only the stream of life, free of accident. I am immortal because all deaths converge in me, from that of the fish to that of Zeus; gathered in me they once again become life, not individual and particular but belonging to nature and thus free.