*A bodhisattva is one who is committed to the good in everything around him. The term bodhisattva was used primarily to refer to the Buddha Shakyamuni (as Gautama Siddhartha is known) in his former lives.

Pictured to the left and below is the illustration of the sutras (Buddhist scriptures) coming from India to Xian to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda.

The stories of his lives, portray the efforts of the bodhisattva to cultivate the qualities, including morality, self-sacrifice, and wisdom, which will define him as a buddha. Later, and especially in the Mahayana tradition – the major form of Buddhism in Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan – it was thought that anyone who made the aspiration to awakening – vowing to become a buddha—is therefore a bodhisattva.

To understand Zen and Buddhist teachings and meditation practice, you must first endeavor to practice pure perception…

Paramita is a Sanskrit word, which means to cross over to the other shore. It implies crossing over from the sea of suffering to the shore of happiness, from the samsara of birth and death to nirvana and from ignorance to enlightenment. As we enter a new year our focus should be moving ourselves and others to our highest endeavor and destiny. To what takes us there.

To mountain vistas – Yellow Mountain in China the famous inspiration for poets and writers for thousands of years where it was thoughts you could reach out and touch heaven.

To whom we are ultimately to become enabling our inherit nature along with divine order to manifest themselves through us.

We begin with something I saw a few weeks ago identified only as written by epc in 1956. An adaptation of which I have added to below.

A lot of what you will see here in the coming year is what I define as “defining Zen as our bliss unfolds and what takes us there” beginning with the following:

I have gone beyond to the place of no concepts and no forms…

Not even emptiness – it is just beyond beyond.                                        Two doors are there, they open from within.

On closer inspection they appear to be two gates. Moving even closer reveals that no keys are needed as there are no gates.

No doors, gateless gates – going through these gates there is a shore and a boat. The boat is empty now. No one gets in the empty boat. This nobody is on the Way to the other shore.

Suddenly, this nobody realizes that Zen’s gateless gate and Tao’s empty boat… both are on the same path. The same river, the very same Way.

It is now so noticeably clear that this nobody in an empty boat sailing through gateless gates and now seeing lights and illumination everywhere is on their way home again.

Namaste

epc 1956/dcd 2021

to be continued…