..續本文上一頁inal heart / mind shines like pure, clear water with the sweetest taste. But if the heart is pure, is our practice over

　　 No, we must not cling even to this purity. We must go beyond all duality, all concepts, all bad, all good, all pure, all impure. We must go beyond self and no self, beyond birth and death. To see a self to be reborn is the real trouble of the world. True purity is limitless, untouchable, beyond all opposites and all creation.

　　We take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. This is the heritage of every Buddha that appears in the world. What is this Buddha

　　 When we see with the eye of wisdom, we know that the Buddha is timeless, unborn, unrelated to any body, any history, any image. Buddha is the ground of all being, the realization of the truth of the unmoving mind.

　　So the Buddha was not enlightened in India. In fact he was never enlightened, was never born, and never died. This timeless Buddha is our true home, our abiding place. When we take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, all things in the world are free for us. They become our teacher, proclaiming the one true nature of life.

　　Yes, I Speak Zen

　　A visiting Zen student asked Achaan Chah, "How old are you

　　 Do you live here all year round

　　"

　　"I live nowhere," he replied. "There is no place you can find me. I have no age. To have age, you must exist, and to think you exist is already a problem. Don”t make problems; then the world has none either. Don”t make a self. There”s nothing more to say."

　　Perhaps the Zen student glimpsed that the heart of vipassana is no different from the heart of Zen.

　　The Unstruck Gong

　　Living in the world and practicing meditation, you will seem to others like a gong that has not been struck and is not producing any sound. They will consider you useless, mad, defeated; but actually, just the opposite is true.

　　Truth is hidden in untruth, permanence is hidden in impermanence.

　　Nothing Special

　　People have asked about my own practice. How do I prepare my mind for meditation

　　 There is nothing special. I just keep it where it always is. They ask, "Then are you an arhat (one who has reached a high stage of spiritual progress)

　　" Do I know

　　 I am like a tree, full of leaves, blossoms, and fruit. Birds come to eat and to nest. Yet the tree does not know itself. It follows its nature; it is as it is.

　　Inside You is Nothing, Nothing at All

　　In my third year as a monk, I had doubts about the nature of samadhi and wisdom. Really desiring to experience samadhi, I strove ceaselessly in my practice. As I sat in meditation, I would try to figure out the process, and therefore my mind was especially distracted. When I did nothing in particular and was not meditating, I was fine. But when I determined to concentrate my mind, it would become extremely agitated.

　　"What”s going on

　　" I wondered. "Why should it be like this

　　" After a while, I realized that concentration is like breathing. If you determine to force your breaths to be deep or shallow, fast or slow, breathing becomes difficult. But when you are just walking along, not aware of your inhalation and exhalation, breathing is natural and smooth. In the same way, any attempt to force yourself to become tranquil is just an expression of attachment and desire and will prevent your attention from settling down.

　　As time went by, I continued to practice with great faith and growing understanding. Gradually I began to see the natural process of meditation. Since my desires were clearly an obstacle, I practiced more openly, investigating the elements of mind as they occurred. I sat and watched, sat and watched, over and over again.

　　One day, much later in my practice, I was walking in meditation sometime after 11pm. My thoughts were almost absent. I was staying at a forest monastery …

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