Your Zazen is the Zazen of the Buddhas

Interesting Dharma talk:

"When you do shikantaza, have faith in the fact that your zazen is the same zazen as the zazen of the Buddhas and Patriarchs. Have this kind of faith. Then, just sit. Since your zazen is the same zazen as that of the Buddhas, you don't need to worry about anything: just sit. Appreciate that your zazen is the zazen of the Buddha."

A Mind As Wide as the Sky

A Zen talk by by Sensei Wendy Egyoku Nakao:

"The Chinese character for emptiness is ku, or sky. Our original nature is like sky—vast, unhindered, and boundless. The clouds, the birds flying, the thunder showers—have you ever seen these stick to the sky? How about the sky taking hold of a bird in mid-flight? What is binding us, setting up walls in the sky where there cannot be any?"

Zen Humor

Well, not all the quotes are meant to be funny, and not all of them are funny, but there you have it:

"Q: How many Zen buddhists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Three - one to change it,
one to not-change it and one to both change- and not-change it."

Zen and ambition

Is Zen compatible with ambition?:

"A friend asked me today whether or not practicing Zen was detrimental to one's ambition and personal drive to succeed, something we've come to think of as a particularly American/Western value.

I don't think so, as I practice Zen and am certainly driven and work hard, but I couldn't really articulate why. How would you have answered that question?"

Click the link to read the answers and discussion.

Case 55 of the Blue Cliff Record

Dharma talk about death, by John Tarrant:

"In the early days of his illness when I spoke to Gregory Willms about dying, I said, 'How's it feel to be dying?' He said, 'Everybody's dying. I just know my schedule.' That's true. We all die. What we're haggling about is the timing and what we will give up. There's no need to wait to decide to give things up. No need to worry about the objects at all. Let's just give up our prejudices and our ideas right now. Give up that kind of clinging we have that closes the heart. If you look into your heart when you do zazen, you can see whether it's open or it's closed. If it's open, you'll be okay. If it's closed, it doesn't matter how clever you are, you won't be okay. There it is."