©2005-2025 Mark A. Foote
This morning I found myself particularly focused on the part of Gautama’s “way of living” that is the experience of zest in inhalation and exhalation, and similarly the experience of ease. He speaks of the body permeated and suffused with such feeling, so that no part of the body is left out.
To the extent that relaxation of ...
The twenty-first case of “The Blue Cliff Record” is as follows:
A monk asked Chih Men, “How is it when the lotus flower has not yet emerged from the water?” Chih Men said, “A lotus flower.”
The monk said, “What about after it has emerged from the water?” Men said, “Lotus leaves.”
...
There’s a koan in the “Blue Cliff Record” (case 17) that goes like this:
A monk asked Hsiang Lin, “What is the meaning of the Patriarch’s coming from the West?”
Hsiang Lin said, “Sitting for a long time becomes toilsome.”
(Yuanwu, ‘Blue Cliff Record’, Shambala publications pg 110)
In a ...