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Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind notes

Satori - dramatic

Zen mind. To make you wonder, and to answer that wondering with the deepest expression of your own

Beginner's mind. What am I?

See things as they are, the original nature of everything

The student should teach himself

Calligraphy, i.e. to write in the most straightforward, simple way, like a beginner. As if discovering what you were writing for the first time. Your full nature will be in your writing.

Right Practice - body
Right Attitude - feeling
Right Understanding - mind

roshi - person who has actualized perfect freedom. Consciousness arises spontaneously and naturally from actual circumstances of the present, not fixed repetitive patterns of self-centered consciousness
Living in the present
Utter ordinariness. A mirror - we feel our own strengths and shortcomings without praise or criticism from him.

Our original face, the extraordinariness of our own nature

"In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."

Keep your practice from becoming impure

The goal is to keep beginner's mind

Self-sufficient state of mind. Empty, ready.

If you discriminate, you limit yourself
Too demanding or greedy, mind is not rich, self-sufficient

There is no thought, "I have attained something." Self-centered thoughts limit the mind. True beginner's - no thought of achievement or of self. When our mind is compassionate it is boundless

1. Right Practice

Body and mind are two and one
Each one of us is dependent and independent
We die, and we do not die

Mind and body are two sides to one coin

Do not try to attain any state of mind

Own your physical body. If you slump, you lose yourself. When we have our body and mind in order, everything else will exist in the right place in the right way.

But usually we try to order things outside us. It is impossible to organize things if you are not in order. When you do things in the right way at the right time, everything else will be organized.

Always take the right posture

Breathing -

Inner world and outer world are limitless
All that exists is the movement of the breathing
Awareness of the universal existence
No idea of time or space

We do things one after the other. There is no time. What we do at a certain time cannot be separated from the time.

i.e. to not like your lunch locale is to be tired of your life. To wish you had gone somewhere else. It is to separate the idea of place from a time.

Good and bad only in your mind. To do or not to do is the reality.

In pure religion, no confusion of time and space, good or bad

We should do. Even not-doing is doing.

Concentrate on breathing
Become a swinging door
Do something I should/must do

We are dependent, yet independent

We are in the center of the world

Concentrate on breathing - fundamental activity of the universal being

 - Control

Die as a small being, moment after moment

Everything beautiful is out of balance, but its background is always in perfect harmony

Suffering is how we live and extend our life

Best to do with people - watch them
Worst - ignore them
Second worst - trying to control them

This works on myself.

Do not be bothered by various images in my mind. Let them come and go.

The true purpose of Zen - to see things as they are. To let everything go as it goes. This is to put everything under control in its widest sense. Zen practice is to open our small mind to realize "big mind," or mind that is everything.

Time goes from past to present, from present to past, from present to future

To go eastward one mile is to go westward one mile

As long as you have rules, you have a chance for freedom

 - Mind waves

When you try to stop your thinking it means you are bothered by it. Do not be bothered by anything. Of you are not bothered by the waves of your mind, they will become calmer.

The mind includes everything. Nothing outside yourself can cause any trouble. You yourself make the waves in your mind.

The mind which includes everything - "big mind."
The mind related to something - limited mind

As your mind does not expect anything from outside, it is always filled

Water and waves are one. Big mind and small mind are one. When you understand this, you have security in your feeling.

A mind with waves is not disturbed but amplified.

Our experiences are always fresh and new, but are also continuous and repeated unfolding of one big mind.

"Good" is supplied by something experienced long ago

In big mind we accept each experience as if recognizing the face in the mirror as our own. There is no fear of using this mind, nowhere to come or go, no fear of death, no suffering. We enjoy all aspects of life as unfolding of big mind.

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