Various Religious images

 

 

Huangbo's No-Mind Seal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Lice-Picking Monkey of Kensho

 

 

 

 

 

The Essence of Tao

 Look, it cannot be seen -- it is beyond form.
Listen, it cannot be heard -- it is beyond sound.
Grasp, it cannot be held -- it is intangible.
These three are indefinable, they are one.
From above it is not bright;
From below it is not dark:
Unbroken thread beyond description.
It returns to nothingness.
Form of the formless,
Image of the imageless,
It is called indefinable and beyond imagination.

Stand before it -- there is no beginning.
Follow it and there is no end.
Stay with the Tao, Move with the present.

Knowing the ancient beginning is the essence of Tao.

- Master Lao-Tzu

 

 

 

 In the dirty sidestreet brothel,
the attractive whore squats over a bucket
to wash out the sperm of a dozen filthy men.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 







 

It has the original mouth but remains wordless;
It is surrounded by a magnificent mound of hair.
Sentient beings can get completely lost in it --
But it is also the birthplace of all the Buddhas of the 10,000 worlds.

-Ikkyu Sojun




 

 Reason exhausted, concerns forgotten—
How could this be adequately expressed?
Wherever I go, the icy moonlight’s there,
Falling just as it does on the valley ahead.
The fruit is ripe, trees heavy with monkeys,
Mountains so endless I seem to have lost the way.
When I lift my head, some light still remains—
I see that I’m west of the place I call home.

-Master Fa-yen

 

Every Profound Spirit Needs a Mask, by Master Nietzsche

(as translated by Walter Kaufmann)

Whatever is profound loves masks; what is most profound even hates image and parable. Might not nothing less than the opposite, be the proper disguise for the shame of a god?
A questionable question: it would be odd if some mystic had not risked something to that effect in his mind.
There are occurrences of such a delicate nature that one does well to cover them up with some rudeness to conceal them; there are actions of love and extravagant generosity after which nothing is more advisable than to take a stick and give any eyewitness a sound thrashing: that would muddle his memory Some know how to muddle and abuse their own memory in order to have their revenge at least against this only witness: shame is inventive.

It is not the worst things that cause the worst shame: there is not only guile behind a mask -- there is so much graciousness in cunning. I could imagine that a human being who had to guard something precious and vulnerable might roll through life, rude and round as an old green wine cask with heavy hoops: the refinement of his shame would want it that way.

A man whose sense of shame has some profundity encounters his destinies and delicate decisions, too, on paths which few ever reach and of whose mere existence his closest intimates must not know: his mortal danger is concealed from their eyes, and so is his regained sureness of life.
Such a concealed man who instinctively needs speech for silence and for burial in silence and who is inexhaustible in his evasion of communication, wants and sees to it that a mask of him roams in his place through the hearts and heads of his friends.
And supposing he did not want it, he would still realize some day that in spite of that a mask of him is there -- and that this is well.
Every profound spirit needs a mask: even more, around every profound spirit a mask is growing continually, owing to the constantly false, namely shallow, interpretation of every word, every step, every sign of life he gives.
 
 


 


 

Hannya

Haughty & self cherishing --
horned, unkempt, madly embroiled in jealous & evil thoughts:
It's just like this
penetrating to the heart of Zen.

Passions are supreme bliss;
delusions are perfect enlightenment;
afflictions are Nirvana;
sensory appearances are all the Hannya dance of Void.

 

LINK: http://www.diamondsutrazen.blogspot.ca/