Hobbled, if not crippled, by choice.

As soon as I gain the self I lose the ground. My only hope, spiritually, is to become dissatisfied with this exchange.

When you understand how practice goes back and forth, then you will enjoy your practice.

fall in love with practice

practice like your life depends upon it

because it does

let yourself be swayed

A passion for practice. This, rather than practice itself, is the secret. It should be so strong that nothing can distract you.

How to awaken an intelligence that can distinguish the real from the illusory?

Ego is required to navigate the human universe. This is because the human universe has been made by people with egos.

Physically we sprout from the earth. 

Spiritually we dangle from heaven. 

Or is it the other way around?

Spirit rises when you need to fight for what's right. An entirely natural response to excess pressure.

It's all in the tone. An elastic tone. A tone produced by the rise of spirit.

Better to have the mind of a wily fox than follow the way of self-control.

imaginative mind stimulates spirit
thinking mind suppresses it

No established method is wrong of itself. However none is complete either, though some are more complete than others.

raring to go

Getting your own way is good for the self but bad for the soul. Suffering is good for the soul but bad for the self.

Astonishing! Everything is intelligent!

Sink & relax. Upper to lower. Chest to legs. Head to heart.

The humility to admit I've been wrong all these years. This should be a daily event. Otherwise there's nothing new – no reduction.

you have a much bigger range than you think

The only way to shift ingrained habits of mind is through a change of heart.

Shun public roads, walk unfrequented paths.

conscious labor & intentional suffering

practice works wonders

Self or Soul. The only choice.

If you cannot feel what you gain when you don't get your own way then this work is not for you.

Suzuki said he was most happy when his students shared in the joy of practice. He said that’s what Buddhism is – not enlightenment or understanding.

Ego is a castle in the air, a fantasy with no real foundation. This is why its maintenance takes so much effort, and why its erosion simply requires a coming down to earth.

an unending urgency

A patchwork of insights. Just like life.

when i sink the world rises

The earth needs our work… now!

Awareness binds me to the moment, to time as it happens. It implies reciprocity. Oneness.

ever watchful

in standing become the high priest conjuring divine presence

Love is pure being. The energy of being. The energy that allows being to pour into the world.

A student got discouraged because the higher states he experienced always passed. “What’s the use?” he asked. 

Suzuki Roshi laughed and said, “That’s right, no use. All these states come and go, but if you continue your practice, you find there’s something underneath.”

A mind big enough – compassionate enough – to always embrace the Other. Without this there is no energy.

the joy of practice

So many people nowadays yet such poor energy, such poverty of spirit.

Now is always new. It's never happened before but it's happening now. If we come to it with memory and desire then we sully it and the world is a lesser place.

Once I asked Suzuki Roshi, “What is Nirvana?” 

He replied: “Seeing one thing through to the end.”

The vast majority of what we do, we do out of habit, confirming and consolidating the Ego. Practice aims to unsettle the Ego so it must in some way cut through habitual self and challenge us to become different. Ritual evocations of spirit.

A sinking that invites the ground up into me. This is why we call it kissing the Earth. And why, when I asked my teacher where he felt his root, he tapped the top of his head.

a music barely audible

Stop activity (motion & emotion), return to stillness and you will experience the dance of equilibrium. The teeming.

what we do not dream we cannot manufacture

Attentive listening gives something back. A lift.

quietness & intimacy

sit & stew

Lighten up. This the secret – spirit. Within the context of meditation, where you have to sit still, it becomes obvious that you only lighten up by relaxing down.

you gather 

  the glimmers 

    the gleanings

our measure of progress is always softness

we are losing touch with touch

move on

The mind of practice has a handle on time – understands the long haul.

reduction

   discovers

      plenitude

get into process otherwise the monotony of practice will defeat you

nothing to it

an immeasurable vigilance

The opposite of ignorance is not gnosis, knowledge, but refinement. Ignorance is a lumpen coarseness which must be slowly comminuted into as many parts as possible so that energy can easily and readily ripple through. Like a leafy shrub shimmering in the breeze.

at first light 

  deer tremble 

    on the shore

fill the day with religious observance

push extremes to generate the energy of return

It's difficult to take people who don't practice seriously.

Instead of relying on the nebulous charms of your foibles, develop some real goodness. Practise!

at the edge 

   where so much 

      is at stake

abide in a gentle acceptance of impermanence

Keeping options open lends an air of narcissistic unreliability and has a negative impact on the world. 

Reside in the body rather than the mind. Mind is language based; body energy based.

Pre-linguistic mind, the compassionate mind, our intersection with the energetic continuum, is only reached through the body.

Was that a cathedral bell 

or the air conditioner?

Spiritual work is fundamentally depressive, but only for a while. It aims to depress the self so that spirit can enter the fray and rise in its stead. It is important the student understands this otherwise they risk becoming attached to the depression and working against spirit as well as self.

Monotheism is unnatural – the inevitable result of losing harmony with Nature. It is not a sign of progress but an indication that our species disappeared up its own fundament a long time ago.

Truth is not something you know and repeat from memory but something you channel once a degree of internal quiet is achieved. It always comes through fresh and unexpected. The natural generation of novelty.

deeply suspicious of pretensions to beauty

The most lonely places are the most lovely.

Softness accepts things in the fullness of their mystery. 

Hardness reduces things to the knowable for ease of use.

to understand you must become unsure of everything

It is crucial to have something in your life that is more important than you are. Something that takes precedence over your own comfort, convenience, happiness and salvation.

Although not a religious person, I find myself doing everything religiously.

standing like the pointer of a scale in equilibrium

we owe it to ourselves to test the rules

Energy has a life of its own, if you let it. This the work: learning to let it.

How to be happy? See the positive, feel the positive, make the positive, be the positive. ('Positive' is the lift of spirit.)

Nothing better than serving real need, but nothing worse than falling victim to selfishness.