Opening teaching on the impersonal nature of sitting
One period of sitting is not your own sitting. You may feel it is your sitting, but the inner view, which is utterly the external view as well, is that your personal existence is not sitting, but is included in sitting.
Forgetting the self is not for enlightenment but for the world
Why do we forget the self? To attain supreme perfect enlightenment? I am sorry, it isn't so. Facing the wall means to shoulder the world and forget yourself.
Humorous metaphor for dropping preconceptions in zazen
Like a person who is about to go for a swim, you forget about what kind of clothing you are wearing. Just take them all off and jump into the water. Some people may go into the water with a newly bought dress!
No-self as description, not doctrine
"No-self" is not a doctrine, it simply describes how things are. If truth is truth, it is true for everybody.
Perception as identity with the perceived
When you see a bird you become the bird. Do you know that? Just seeing it is becoming it. If it were otherwise, this ability of seeing or listening would not be given to us.
Citing Dogen on love and mountains
Dogen left very beautiful words on that high, distant mountain, "The mountain belongs to who loves it most."
Kobun's personal realization of non-possession
Thinking of these things, I have been feeling that nothing is made by me. Everything belongs to the world, including from the very center of my being. This body belongs to all. I am here, but it doesn't belong to me.
Describing the experience of samadhi
Once in a while you sense your entire being is in utter samadhi. It's a state of forgetting your own self, as if the "self" of yourself does not exist as you thought it existed. Some great dynamic, gigantic life is manifesting its own course and you don't know who you are or where you are located.
The thin line between competition and compassion
Competitive mind and compassionate mind both have the same root. How do they differ? If somebody you love more than yourself falls, you cannot say, "Oh good!" Instead, you think you are dead, that you, yourself, have fallen down. It is really a very slight difference.
How the birth of 'I' creates separation
The moment you give birth to self, the small "I," all of a sudden "many" becomes "others." "Many" means everyone is yourself, but as soon as you realize there is "I," all who were yourself become "others."
Dogen on the preciousness and brevity of human life
Dogen mentions somewhere in Shobogenzo that we are lucky to have this human life, although it is swift as morning dew. So keep every moment as a treasure to do something with it.