Kategori: Kodo Sawaki

The eyes don’t say, “Sure we’re lower, but we see more.”
The eyebrows don’t reply, “Sure we don’t see anything, but we are higher up.”

Living out the buddha-dharma means fulfilling your function completely without knowing that you’re doing it. A mountain doesn’t know it’s tall. The sea doesn’t know it’s wide and deep. Each and every thing in the universe is active without knowing it.

The bird’s singing and the flower’s laughter appear naturally,
completely independent from the person sitting in zazen at the foot of the cliff.

The bird doesn’t sing in honor of the person in zazen. The flower doesn’t blossom to amaze the person with her beauty. In exactly the same way, the person doesn’t sit in zazen in order to get satori. Every single being simply realizes the self, through the self, for the self.

– Kodo Sawaki, ’To You’

To you who say that your body, just as it is, is already Buddha

When you, inseparable from Buddha, put Buddha’s activity into practice – only then are you a Buddha. And when you act like a fool, then you’re a fool.

It’s only in your approach to life that Buddha appears.

A person who puts a buddha’s actions into practice is called a Buddha.

Any buddha that humans have thought up isn’t a Buddha.

When we say Buddha is unlimited, it means that he’s beyond any fixed form. It isn’t a measurement of his size.

Buddha is sharp-witted, cheerful, and free of attachment. Nevertheless, lots of people these days think that Buddha is dreary and unlucky.

– Kodo Sawaki, ’To You’