Zen on Love, Zen on Ego

Zen on Love
there is something
at the heart
of all things

deep empty full
alive simple vast
sweet innocent free
courageous profound
still perfect clear
lovely loving love

***

Zen on Ego
the subtle and illusive
assumption of existence
a starting place
for other thoughts
an assumed reference-point
the thought of "I"
the "I" thought
where division begins
and wholeness breaks apart
dividing our world
into names and things

***

Short Zen Poems, Koans

Hooray For Our Side!

Interesting post over at Hardcore Zen:

"Enlightenment is not the ultimate success and lack of enlightenment is not evidence of failure.

There is no success or failure in reality. Success and failure are judgments about reality based entirely — entirely — upon what your tiny ego thinks is good for it or bad for it. This is not reality at all. What you call failure may be exactly what you really need while what you call success may be a slippery slide into delusion and darkness. The world out there is not something apart from you. When it changes in ways you don’t like, who is responsible?"

Zen Blog Vimala Sangha

Interesting discussion of bowing:

"The unique quality of Buddhist bowing is that, in essence, we are not bowing to an “other,” but to our own (and everyone's) innate Awakened Buddha nature. At least this is the feeling in contemplative practice. Very few Buddhists in today's world are meditators, or contemplatives, and many pray directly to Amida Buddha, or some emanation of Buddha, in much the way Christians or Jews pray. Still, we bow, as Suzuki Roshi would say, just to bow. In Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, he came up with a curious phrase: we bow to “horizontalize the mast of the ego.”"