The Little Zen Companion by David Schiller

Author:David Schiller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Workman Publishing Company, INC
Published: 1994-01-10T16:00:00+00:00

When a fish swims, it swims on and on, and there is no end to the water. When a bird flies, it flies on and on, and there is no end to the sky. There was never a fish that swam out of the water, or a bird that flew out of the sky. When they need a little water or sky, they use just a little; when they need a lot, they use a lot. Thus they use all of it at every moment, and in every place they have perfect freedom.

DOGEN

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

MATTHEW 6:28-29

Each portion of matter may be conceived of as a garden full of plants, and as a pond full of fishes. But each branch of the plant, each member of the animal, each drop of its humors, is also such a garden or such a pond.

LEIBNIZ

As is the human body,

so is the cosmic body.

As is the human mind,

so is the cosmic mind.

As is the microcosm,

so is the macrocosm.

As is the atom,

so is the universe.

THE UPANISHADS

Butter tea and wind pictures, the Crystal Mountain, and blue sheep dancing on the snow—it’s quite enough!

Have you seen the snow leopard?

No! Isn’t that wonder fill?

PETER MATTHIESSEN

Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire

with God:

But only he who sees takes off

his shoes.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

Everything is holy!

everybody’s holy!

everywhere is holy!

everyday is in eternity!

Everyman’s an angel!

ALLEN GINSBERG

Goodnight stars.

Goodnight air.

MARGARET WISE BROWN

A heavy snowfall disappears into the sea. What silence!

FOLK ZEN SAYING

Knock on the sky and listen to the sound!

ZEN SAYING

This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on his heap of mud keep still…

JOSEPH CONRAD

With the evening breeze the water laps against the heron’s legs.

BUSON

One real world is enough.

SANTAYANA

Each molecule preaches

perfect law,

Each moment chants true

sutra:

The most fleeting thought

is timeless,

A single hair’s enough to

stir the sea.

SHUTAKU

Modem Physics

Found in the beginning of the Heart Sutra, a Buddhist work that holds a preeminent place in Zen, are the words:

Form is no different from emptiness.

Emptiness is no different from form.

Form is precisely emptiness,

emptiness is precisely form.

Two thousand years later, Western physicists agree.

Science’s concept of the universe was changed irrevocably by quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory of relativity which questioned the separate identity of energy and matter. Our comfortable ideas of a universe made up of solid little bits of matter behaving in logical ways have been exploded.

A particle is not a separate entity but a set of relationships. The world is an interconnected tissue of events, a dynamic unbroken whole. Scientists are no longer observers but participants. And physics and mysticism converge in striking parallels, leading back full circle:

“A powerful awareness lies dormant in these discoveries [of modern physics]: an awareness of the hitherto-unsuspected powers of the mind to mold ‘reality,’ rather than the other way around. In this sense the philosophy of physics is

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