Whatever comes to mind. Sometimes a story I read, sometimes something that came to me while holding my mala beads.
Someone asked Zhaozhou: Does a dog have Buddha-nature? Zhaozhou said: Mu. Just one word that countless people have failed to penetrate for a thousand years. Maybe it's not an answer but a wall — making you crash into it and find all your prepared responses useless.
I was reading the Lotus Sutra recently and came across the Parable of the Phantom City. I put the book down and sat by the window for a long time. Not because the story was so dramatic, but because I suddenly felt it was about me.
The Buddha told a story about a blind turtle at the bottom of a vast ocean, surfacing once every hundred years, trying to put its head through a hole in a randomly drifting piece of wood. That probability, he said, is how rare it is to obtain a human life. This story has stayed with me — about cherishing, about possibility, about still surfacing when you can't see the way.
Someone asked Zhaozhou: Does a dog have Buddha-nature? Zhaozhou said: Mu. Just one word that countless people have failed to penetrate for a thousand years. Maybe it's not an answer but a wall — making you crash into it and find all your prepared responses useless.
I was reading the Lotus Sutra recently and came across the Parable of the Phantom City. I put the book down and sat by the window for a long time. Not because the story was so dramatic, but because I suddenly felt it was about me.
The Buddha told a story about a blind turtle at the bottom of a vast ocean, surfacing once every hundred years, trying to put its head through a hole in a randomly drifting piece of wood. That probability, he said, is how rare it is to obtain a human life. This story has stayed with me — about cherishing, about possibility, about still surfacing when you can't see the way.
In the Avatamsaka Sutra, a young man walks a very long road to meet fifty-three teachers. Not a list of great masters - but a boatman, a doctor, a merchant, a king. Each one taught him a new way of seeing the world.
I read a story from the Lotus Sutra today, and after I finished, I sat there for a long while.
Hanshan asked Shide: when someone slanders me, cheats me, insults me — how should I deal with it? Shide replied: tolerate him, yield to him, let him be, avoid him, endure him, respect him, pay him no mind.
A couple of days ago I was flipping through an old book and came across a set of woodblock prints. Black and white, very simple. A person, an ox, ten pictures. I wasn't looking at the pictures anymore. I was looking at myself.
The Parable of the Prodigal Son in the Lotus Sutra tells of a lost child who wandered for fifty years, not knowing his father had been waiting all along. Reading this story, I realized that poor son was me.
Zen Master Hakuin was falsely accused of fathering a child. He didn't defend himself. He just said "Is that so?" — and these three words changed how I see blame and misunderstanding.
On a windy day in Guangzhou, a flag flapped outside my window. I stood there watching it and remembered a story from thirteen hundred years ago — two monks arguing about whether it was the wind or the flag that was moving. Huineng said: it's neither. It's your mind that moves. I used to think this was idealism. Now I think it's about something simpler — what makes you suffer isn't what happens outside, but how your mind responds.
This morning, after the alarm went off, I didn't reach for my phone right away. It wasn't discipline. I was dreaming of an old temple with its door shut, wondering whether to push it open. Then I woke up.
This morning I was sweeping the courtyard when the sound of the bamboo broom made me stop. Then I remembered the story of Xiangyan — a monk who had read countless sutras but only understood everything when he heard a piece of tile strike bamboo. Maybe practice doesn't need grand narratives. Just one ordinary sound, one moment of quiet.