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A letter from Tricycle’s editor
Finding parallels between modern-day stand-up comedians and Zen masters of the past
A Montessori teacher and Zen practitioner on the importance of focusing on the process, not the result.
The fourth Zen precept
Early Chinese Zen masters seldom spoke about ideas like emptiness. Early writings also lack discussions about sutras, including texts like The Diamond Sutra, which is strongly linked to the Zen tradition. The Heart Sutra is hardly mentioned, and the bodhisattva ideal also gets very little ink in early records. Often, when such ideas and texts […]
Although Bodhidharma is honored as the “First Ancestor” of Zen Buddhism in China, historians know well that Zen not only preceded Bodhidharma, it was also widely practiced centuries before his arrival. So how did Bodhidharma acquire the honored title of “The First”? The foreign Parthian monk An Shigao is credited with introducing Zen to China […]
Was it Bodhidharma (the Indians and Zen Buddhists think so) or Emperor Shen Nung (all of China thinks so) who discovered tea? The emperor found that it kept his soldiers alert, while Bodhidharma, marathon meditator that he was, discovered that it helped keep him awake in meditation (in his commitment to stay awake, Bodhidharma severed […]
If you use your mind to study reality, you won’t understand either your mind or reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you’ll understand both. Those who don’t understand, don’t understand understanding. And those who understand, understand not understanding. People capable of true vision know that the mind is empty. They transcend both […]
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