“Thoughts—and feelings triggered by thoughts—are mutable and impermanent, and yet because we humans incorrectly identify our being with our thinking, we construct a false notion of ourselves out of ideas and memories that have no actual substance. No wonder the ego is called ‘the false self.’”

-Karen Maezen Miller

This Week’s Discussion Topic
It’s often said in Zen that “All beings are already enlightened.” How do you understand this statement, and how does it relate to practice?

“Liberation is about cutting, or dissolving, or letting go of, or seeing through—choose your image—the attachment to anything. The description of the no-clinging mind may be different in the different schools, but the experience of the no-clinging mind is the same.”

-Joseph Goldstein

This Week’s Discussion Topic
How has koan study affected your practice?

“Buddhism means not being concerned with whether you’re seen as a hot-shot Dalai Lama, or a hot-shot Pope, or a hot-shot parent, or even a halfway decent anything… the ego is just a construct. Get over it.”

-Christine Cox

This Week’s Discussion Topic
Describe your experience with Shikantaza (just sitting) meditation and how it has worked for you.

“Enlightenment is absolute cooperation with the inevitable.”

-Anthony de Mello

This Week’s Discussion Topic
How has humility played a role in your practice?

“We don’t have to get rid of all our neurotic tendencies: what we do is begin to see how funny they are, and then they’re just part of the fun of life, the fun with living with other people. They’re all crazy. And so are we, of course.”

-Charlotte Joko Beck

This Week’s Discussion Topic
What are some of your most prominent “neurotic” thought lines, and how do you deal with them?

“With only a change in perspective, the most ordinary things take on inexpressible beauty. When we don’t know, we don’t judge. And when we don’t judge, we see things in a different light. That is the light of our awareness, unfiltered by intellectual understanding, rumination, or evaluation.”

-Katsuki Sekida

This Week’s Discussion Topic
Discuss the relationship between faith and doubt as it relates to your practice.

“If we indulge the human propensity to understate, exaggerate, and alter facts for whatever comfort or false security it might accord us, we forfeit our capacity to see reality clearly, and see only a world of our own invention.”

-Lin Jensen

This Week’s Discussion Topic
When sitting, what techniques do you use to relate to thoughts, so you don’t become overly engaged with or controlled by them?

“To use your mind in a natural way means to avoid trying to control it. The more you try to control your mind, the more stray thoughts will come up to bother you.”

-Master Sheng-Yen

This Week’s Discussion Topic
Discuss the relationship between “effortlessness” and “effort” as it relates to your practice.

“The source of ethical conduct is found in the way things are, circumstance itself: unfiltered immediate reality reveals what is needed.”

-Lin Jensen

This Week’s Discussion Topic
What are some misconceptions you initially had about meditation/Buddhism that you’ve discovered aren’t true once you began earnestly practicing?

“As long as we think we shouldn’t feel something, as long as we are afraid of feeling vulnerable, our defenses kick in to try to get life under control, to manipulate ourselves or other people. But instead of either controlling or sequestering our feelings, we can learn to both contain and feel them fully.”

-Barry Magid

This Week’s Discussion Topic
What does the famous Zen saying “If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha,” mean to you?