Acharya's Zen Teachings
"If you light a lamp for somebody, it will also brighten your own path."
Grandmother’s story is very important. Trimming the garden, there is a garden everywhere. A garden of your love, garden of your studies, garden of your religion, it has to be trimmed, and otherwise it will become bushy. So trimming is very important and only at a grand old age he should trim with you, then only you can get the smell, feel the smell, taste touch and see the yin and yang. Yes, trimming the garden, cleaning the grounds. Cleanliness is next to godliness. Cleaning the ground, cleaning your bowels, cleaning your mind, cleaning the ground along with you when you are cleaning, he will tell you why it is important to clean it up. Why it should be polished. A smallest dirt, one step leads to ten thousand steps of dirt.
Those who understand always act naturally. Most men live in impermanence, the unreal, but the man of Zen lives in the real. Those who understand always lives natural understanding, we also do martial arts to understand it takes minimum 10,000 times of practice in conscious state. Everybody is practicing. Everybody is doing Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Allah, Allah, Buddha, Buddha, they all have the mantras, but those mantras have become unconscious state mantras. So if I say you have to practice 10,000 times, some people will tell I am making you a slave by making you repeat like a parrot. Yes it is, if you are in an unconscious state, you are parrot. If you are in conscious state you are a master.
‘Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment.’ ~Thich Nhat Hanh
"Do not speak - unless it improves on silence." - Budhha.
"We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want." - Bodhidharma
Is Nirvana something you get or is Nirvana something you are? If you can get it, you can lose it. If you are ‘it’, it is never gone. If you get it, if you try to grab it, you will lose it. But if you are ‘it’, you are not likely to lose it under any circumstances.
The beauty is like that. You just act as you are. When you try to act beautiful, try to act like a leader, it stinks. Immediately ugliness creeps in, poison creeps in because people can know that you are conscious that you are beautiful and nobody wants to talk to you.
" God is watching. For every work given, you should be thankful: I got a job, I got a work, I got a work while so many people do not have work. There is “unemployment,” not only in India, around the world. When you got a job, you should do it as karma yoga. You should penetrate deeper into that karma yoga. You should take care of the job so beautifully like a new child. You distribute sweets, a lot of life energy comes and millions of cells in your brain start waking up."
That's Zen in the Art of Being Thankful.
"We take refuge in pride because we are afraid to tell the truth to ourselves. "- Kakuzo Okakura
The importance of continuous practice is essential to achieve our goal. One step leads to ten thousand steps. Practice makes a man perfect. Practise everything, not once or twice, but hundred- thousand- ten thousand times without any compromise. Well-concentrated efforts, supported by constant practice, bring victory"
"Sitting silently, doesn't mean you are idling. It means don't do monkey business. Sitting silently means, keep doing work without expecting results, Karma Yoga. And when the time comes, gods will shower blessings on you. You will receive your reward when the time comes without stress and tension."
A lord asked Takuan, a Zen teacher, to suggest how he can pass the time as he felt his days are long & mundane.
Takuan wrote eight Chinese characters and gave them to the man.
"Not twice this day
Inch time foot gem.
This day will not come again.
Each minute is worth a priceless gem."
