You are like all the stars in the universe
 One day a student from Chicago came to the Providence Zen Center and asked the teacher there, Seung Sahn Soen-sa, “What is Zen?”
Soen-sa held his Zen stick above his head and said, “Do you understand?”
The student said, “I don’t know.”
Soen-sa said, “This don’t-know mind is you. Zen is understanding yourself.”
“What do you understand about me? Teach me.”
Soen-sa said, “In a cookie factory, different cookies are baked in the shape of animals, cars, people, and airplanes. They all have different names and forms, but they are all made from the same dough, and they all taste the same.
“In the same way, all things in the universe – the sun, the moon, the stars, mountains, rivers, people, and so forth – have different names and forms, but they are all made from the same substance. The universe is organized into pairs of opposites: light and darkness, man and woman, sound and silence, good and bad. But all these opposites are mutual, because they are made from the same substance. Their names and their forms are different, but their substance is the same. Names and forms are made by your thinking. If you are not thinking and have no attachment to name and form, then all substance is one. Your don’t know mind cuts off all thinking. This is your substance. The substance of this Zen stick and your own substance are the same. You are this stick; this stick is you.”
--Stories of Seung Sahn Soen-sa
|
“I'm simply saying that there is a way to be sane. I'm saying that you can get rid of all the insanity created by the past in you. Just by being a simple witness of your thought processes. 
May the blessings of these practices awaken your own inner wisdom and inspire your compassion. .... and through the blessing of your heart may the world find peace...
