Master Sogaku Harada died at the age of ninety-one.
At his funeral service hung a piece of calligraphy written by himself: "For forty years I have been selling water by the bank of a river. Ho ho ho. My labors have been wholly without merit." What did he mean? --- In [email protected], Jue Miao Jing Ming - 覺å¦ç²¾æ <chan.jmjm@...> wrote: > > Good Morning Bill, Chris, Mel and All, > > Thank you for your feedback. Because these terminology is not in the > "usual" zen dictionary. I needed to know whether I should continue on > this path, though Chan uses primarily Tao in practice and Buddhism in > describing spirituality. I also sensed that probably people are too > nice to me and left my post alone, because Zen does not speak this way. :-) > > Buddha taught for 49 years. And his teachings probably contains the > most material describing various states of spirituality. I sense > probably it is time to talk a little about spirituality. > > Words such as Kensho, Satori, Samadhi are all from Buddhism and are all > labels for a certain spiritual state, or realm, or level, or whatever > you prefer. Nonetheless, spiritual states are difficult to describe no > matter what label we use. > > The goal here is trying to connect spirituality with our daily life, in > other words explain the relationship of our heart and our mind how to > relate them to our practice. > > On the other hand, I noticed that there are very few discussion about > nirvana, enlightenment, Buddhahood. These are the essence of our > practice. These are not goals, as rejected by Zen purest, but > spirituality states we could witness. After 6, 7 years on this forum, I > sense it is probably time to say it clearly that "we all can be > enlightened in this life." Buddha did it in 13 years. My teacher did > it in 8 years. Why can't we. > > We all can. Yet we have to start with the unfiltered communication and > the unfiltered practice with an engaged and honest witness. If the > communication are filtered by our mind, then the rest of it will also be > filtered out. > > JM
