Spiritual Teachers

"In the literature on Zen Buddhism, there are writers such as Suzuki, whose authenticity is beyond doubt--he speaks of what he has experienced. The very fact of this authenticity makes his books often difficult to read, because it is of the essence of Zen not to give answers that are rationally satisfying. There are some other books which seem to portray the thoughts of Zen properly, but whose authors are mere intellectuals whose experience is shallow. Their books are easier to understand, but they do not convey the essential quality of Zen."

"Dr Suzuki writes with authority. Not only has he studied original works in Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese and Japanese, but he has an up-to-date knowledge of Western thought in German and French as well as the English which he speaks and writes so fluently. He is, moreover, more than a scholar; he is a Buddhist. Though not a priest of any Buddhist sect, he is honoured in every temple in Japan, for his knowledge of spiritual things, as all who have sat at his feet bear witness, is direct and profound. When he speaks of the higher stages of consciousness he speaks as a man who dwells therein."

"Suzuki's works on Zen Buddhism are among the best contributions to the knowledge of living Buddhism… We cannot be sufficiently grateful to the author, first for the fact of his having brought Zen closer to Western understanding, and secondly for the manner in which he has achieved this task."

"Some primitive people were once visited by an American scientist, and when they were told that Western people think with their heads, the primitive people thought that the Americans were all crazy. They said, "We think with the abdomen." People in China and also in Japan—I do not know about India—when some difficult problems come up, often say, "Think with your abdomen," or simply, "Ask your belly." So, when any question in connection with our existence comes up, we are advised to "think" with the belly—not with any detachable part of the body. "The belly" stands for the totality of one's being, while the head, which is the latest-developed portion of the body, represents intellection."

"The head is conscious while the abdomen is unconscious. When the master tells his disciples to "think" with the lower part of the body, he means that the koan is to be taken down to the unconscious and not to the conscious field of consciousness."

"Somebody asked Joshu, "Buddha is the enlightened one and teacher of us all. He is naturally entirely free of all the passions (klesa), is he not?" Joshu said, "No, he is the one who cherishes the greatest of all the passions." "How is that possible?" "His greatest passion is to save all beings!" Joshu answered."

"The Zen master is a strange sort of man. He will not listen to you and to what you may tell him about sciences modern or ancient. He knows his business better from his experience."

"The bodhisattva would revolve the identity-wheel of opposites or contradictions: black and white, dark and bright, sameness and difference, the one and the many, finite and infinite, love and hate, friend and foe, etc., etc. While in the midst of clouds and dust, infinitely variegated, the bodhisattva works with his head and face all covered with mud and ashes. Where the utmost confusion of passions rages in its indescribable furies, the bodhisattva lives his life in all its vicissitudes, as the Japanese proverb has it, “seven times rolling up and down, and eight times getting up straight.” He is like the in flame, whose color grows brighter and brighter as it goes through the baptism of fire."

"Western people often wonder why the Chinese people have not developed many more sciences and mechanical contrivances. This is strange, they say, when the Chinese are noted for their discoveries and inventions such as the magnet, gunpowder, the wheel, paper, and other things. The principal reason is that the Chinese and other Asiatic peoples love life as it is lived and do not wish to turn it into a means of accomplishing something else, which would divert the course of living to quite a different channel."

"The doctrine of karma is terrible; the doctrine of Parinamana is humane: karma is the law of nature, inflexible and irreconcilable; Parinamana is the heart of a religious being, filled with tears: the one is rigidly masculine and knows no mercy whatever; the other is most tenderly feminine, always ready to weep and help: the one is justice incarnate; the other is absolute love: the one is the god of thunder and lightning, who crushes everything that dares to resist him; the other is a gentle spring shower, warm, soft, and relaxing, and helping all life to grow: we bow before the one in awe and reverence; we embrace the other as if finding again the lost mother: we must have the one to be responsible for our own thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and deeds; but we cannot let the other go, as we need love, tolerance, humaneness, and kindheartedness."

"Karma cannot be denied, it is the law; but the human heart is tender and loving, it cannot remain calm and unconcerned at the sight of suffering, in whatever way this might have been brought about. It knows that all things ultimately come from the one source; when others suffer I suffer too; why then should not self-renunciation somehow moderate the austerity of karma? This is the position taken by Mahayana Buddhists in regard to the doctrine of karma."

"Basho was a nature poet, as most of the Oriental poets are. They love nature so much that they feel one with nature, they feel every pulse beating through the veins of nature. Most Westerners are apt to alienate themselves from nature. They think man and nature have nothing in common except in some desirable aspects, and that nature exists only to be utilized by man. But to Eastern people nature is very close. This feeling for nature was stirred when Basho dcovered an inconspicuous, almost negligible plant blooming by the old dilapidated hedge along the remote country road, so innocently, so unpretentiously, not at all desiring to be noticed by anybody. Yet when one looks at it, how tender, how full of divine glory or splendor more glorious than Solomon's it is!"

"Likewise, at every deed, good or evil, committed by any of the sentient units of this spiritual organization, the Dharmakaya rejoices or is grieved. When it is grieved, it wills to counteract the evil with goodness; when it rejoices, it knows that so far the cause of goodness has been advanced."

"Deliverance or enlightenment, therefore, consists of making every sentient being open his mental eye to this fact. It is not his ego-soul that makes him think, feel, desire, or aspire, but the Dharmakaya itself in the form of Bodhicitta or “wisdom-heart” which constitutes his ethical and religious being. Abandon the thought of egoism, and return to the universal source of love and wisdom, and we are released from the bond of evil karma, we are enlightened as to the reason of existence, we are Buddhas."

"The Mahayana Buddhists offer a doctrine complementary to that of karma, in order to give a more satisfying and more human solution to our inmost religious needs. The doctrine of , therefore, must go side by side with that of karma; for through this harmonious co-working of the two, the true spirit of Buddhism will be more effectively realized. In this phase of development, Mahayana Buddhism must be said to be profoundly religious."

"The ranges of the Himalayas may stir in us the feeling of sublime awe; the waves of the Pacific may suggest something of infinity. But when one’s mind is poetically or mystically or religiously opened, one feels as Basho did that even in every blade of wild grass there is something really transcending all venal, base human feelings, which lifts one to a realm equal in its splendor to that of the Pure Land."

"This subtle spiritual system, of which all sentient beings are its parts or units, is like a vast ocean in which the eternal moonlight of Dharmakaya is reflected. Even a faint wavelet which is noticed in one part of the water is sure to spread, sooner or later, according to the resistance of the molecules, over its entire surface, and thus finally disturb the serenity of the lunar image in it."

"Enlightenment is like everyday consciousness but two inches above the ground."

"We may sometimes ignore the claims of reason and rest satisfied, though usually unconsciously, with assertions which are conflicting when critically examined, but we cannot disregard by any means those of the religious sentiment which finds satisfaction only in the very fact of things. If it ever harbored some flagrant contradiction in the name of faith, it was because its ever-pressing demands had to be met with even at the expense of reason."

"Tennyson’s plucking the flower and holding it in his hand, “root and all,” and looking at it, perhaps intently. It is very likely he had a feeling somewhat akin to that of Basho who discovered a nazuna flower by the roadside hedge. But the difference between the two poets is: Basho does not pluck the flower. He just looks at it. He is absorbed in thought. He feels something in his mind, but he docs not express it. He lets an exclamation mark say everything he wishes to say. For he has no words to utter; his feeling is too full, too deep, and he has no desire to conceptualize it. As to Tennyson, he is active and analytical. He first plucks the flower from the place where it grows. He separates it from the ground where it belongs. Quite differently from the Oriental poet, he does not leave the flower alone. He must tear it away from the crannied wall, ”root and all,” which means that the plant must die."

"The is now conceived by the human heart as love and wisdom, and its eternal prayer is heard to be the deliverance of the ignorant from their self-created evil karma which haunts them as an eternal curse. The process of deliverance is to awaken in the mind of the ignorant the Samyaksambodhi, or most perfect wisdom, which is the reflection of the Dharmakaya in sentient beings. This wisdom, this Bodhi, is generally found asleep in the benighted, who are in a spiritual slumber induced by the narcotic influence of evil karma, which has been and is being committed by them, because of their non-realization of the presence in themselves of the Dharmakaya."

"The scientifically minded West applies its intelligence to inventing all kinds of gadgets to elevate the standard of living and save itself from what it thinks to be unnecessary labor or drudgery. It thus tries hard to “develop” the natural resources it has access to. The East, on the other hand, does not mind engaging itself in menial and manual work of all kinds, it is apparently satisfied with the "undeveloped" state of civilization. It does not like to be machine-minded, to turn itself into a slave to the machine. This love of work is perhaps characteristic of the East."

"Allah made joining and connecting with the kinship and cognation, the cause of lengthening of life."

"And (Allah made) the kindness to parents as a protectional (shield) to His wrath and displeasure."

"(Allah rendered) patience as a help for getting reward."

"Commanding goodness and forbiding to do evil (are) for the amendment and correction of society and the common folks."

"Service (is) the cause of your getting distant from pride."

"Alms (is) for the purity of your soul, and flourishment and expansion of your sustenence."

"Fasting (is) for the maintainance and firmness of your sincerity."

"Allah made the faith for you as a purity from polytheism (and unbelief)."

"And (Allah set) the subordination and obedience of us (the houshold of the Prophet (saww)) for the security of society's system, and our Imāmat as a safety from seggregation and disunity."

"Oh Muslims! Is my inheritance usurped? Oh son of Abu Quhafa (Abu Bakr), is it in the Book of Allah that you inherit your father and I do not inherit my father? Surely you have done a strange thing! Did you intendedly desert the Book of Allah and turned your back on it? Allah said: "And Solomon was David's heir." (27:16); and said about John son of Zechariah: "Grant me from Thyself an heir, who should inherit me and inherit from the children of Jacob." (19:5-6) and said: "And the possessors of relationships are nearer to each other in the ordinance of Allah." (8:75), and He said: "Allah enjoins you concerning your children: The male shall have the equal of the portion of two females." (4:11), and He said: "Bequest is prescribed for you when death approaches one of you, if he leaves behind wealth for parents and near relatives." (2:180). You claimed that I have no position, and no inheritance from my father, and there is no kinship between us. So did Allah distinguish you with a verse, from which He excluded my father? Or do you say: people of two religions do not inherit each other? Am I and my father not of one religion? Or are you more aware of the Qur’an than my father and my cousin? So, here it is before you! Take it with its noseband and saddle! It shall dispute with you on the Day of Punishment; what a fair judge Allah is, the master (of the inheritance) is Muhammad, and the appointment is the Day of Resurrection. At the time of the Hour the wrongdoers shall lose, and it shall not benefit you to regret then! For every Message, there is a time limit, and ye shall know to whom a punishment that will confound him comes, and upon whom a lasting doom will fall."

"Allah set Hajj for the consolidation and reinforcement of the religion."

"I have been hired by Allah to get a wage, which if the space between the Earth and sky is filled up with pearls, still (the wage) would be more than it, for each of the questions I may answer you. Therefore, I deserve it that I must not feel tired or exhausted (in answering your questions)."

"First thy neighbour, and there after your own house."

"Allah executed and rendered justice for the sake of putting together and harmonization of the hearts."

"God has required us (the Ahlul Bayt) to be obeyed for the sake of protection of the Ummah (community) and Imāmat (leadership); and our leadership is obligatory to protect against disunity."

"Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle between good and evil the essential cycle in the working of things. The translation of morality into the realm of metaphysics, as force, cause, as end in itself, is his work. But the very question presents its own answer. Zarathustra created this most fateful of all errors—morality; therefore he must be the first to recognize it."

"Since the classical Greeks already, it has been common to date Zarathuštra to the 6th century BC, hardly a few generations before the Persian wars. In popular literature, this date is still given, but scholars have now settled for an earlier date: “The archaism of the Gāthās would incline us to situate Zarathuštra in the very beginning of the first millennium BCE, if not even earlier.” (Varenne 2006) But how much earlier? According to leading scholar SkjaervØ, “Zoroastrianism (…) originated some four millennia ago”."

"But Zarathustra made it clear in which direction the answer lay; it is towards the artist-psychologist, the intuitional thinker. There are very few such men in the world's literature; the great artists are not thinkers, the great thinkers are seldom artists."

"The laws of Manu are the doctrines of Plato, Philo, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, and of the Kabala. The esoterism of every religion may be solved by the latter. The kabalistic doctrine of the allegorical Father and Son, or Xlarrjp and Aoyos is identical with the groundwork of Buddhism. Moses could not reveal to the multitude the sublime secrets of religious speculation, nor the cosmogony of the universe ; the whole resting upon the Hindu Illusion, a clever mask veiling the Sanctum Sanctorum, and which has misled so many theological commentators. (p. 271)"

"Zarathustra (Zend). The great lawgiver, and the founder of the religion variously called Mazdaism, Magism, Parseeїsm, Fire-Worship, and Zoroastrianism. The age of the last Zoroaster (for it is a generic name) is not known, and perhaps for that very reason. Xanthus of Lydia, the earliest Greek writer who mentions this great lawgiver and religious reformer, places him about six hundred years before the Trojan War. But where is the historian who can now tell when the latter took place? Aristotle and also Eudoxus assign him a date of no less than 6,000 years before the days of Plato, and Aristotle was not one to make a statement without a good reason for it. Berosus makes him a king of Babylon some 2,200 years B.C.; but then, how can one tell what were the original figures of Berosus, before his MSS. passed through the hands of Eusebius, whose fingers were so deft at altering figures, whether in Egyptian synchronistic tables or in Chaldean chronology? Haug refers Zoroaster to at least 1,000 years B.C.; and Bunsen (God in History, Vol. I., Book iii., ch. vi., p. 276) finds that Zarathustra Spitama lived under the King Vistaspa about 3,000 years B.C., and describes him as “one of the mightiest intellects and one of the greatest men of all time”."

"It is with such exact dates in hand, and with the utterly extinct language of the Zend, whose teachings are rendered, probably in the most desultory manner, by the Pahlavi translation—a tongue, as shown by Darmsteter, which was itself growing obsolete so far back as the Sassanides— that our scholars and Orientalists have presumed to monopolise to themselves the right of assigning hypothetical dates for the age of the holy prophet Zurthust. But the Occult records claim to have the correct dates of each of the thirteen Zoroasters mentioned in the Dabistan. Their doctrines, and especially those of the last (divine) Zoroaster, spread from Bactria to the Medes; thence, under the name of Magism, incorporated by the Adept-Astronomers in Chaldea, they greatly influenced the mystic teachings of the Mosaic doctrines, even before, perhaps, they had culminated into what is now known as the modern religion of the Parsis."

"Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Epicharmus, Empedocles, Kebes, Euripides, Plato, Euclid, Philo, Boethius, Virgil, Marcus Cicero, Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, Psellus, Synesius, Origen, and, finally, Aristotle himself, far 'from denying our immortality, support it most emphatically. (p. 251)"

"Thou shouldst not become presumptuous through life; for death comes upon thee at last, and the perishable part falls to the ground."

"News arrived from Estakhan that the fire of the chief temple of Persia, which had burned for a thousand years, had become extinguished [at the time of the birth of Muhammad]."

"Like Manu and Vyâsa in India, Zarathustra is a generic name for great reformers and law-givers. The hierarchy began with the divine Zarathustra in the Vendîdâd, and ended with the great, but mortal man, bearing that title, and now lost to history. There were, as shown by the Dabistan, many Zoroasters or Zarathustras. As related in the Secret Doctrine, Vol. II., the last Zoroaster was the founder of the Fire-temple of Azareksh, many ages before the historical era. Had not Alexander destroyed so many sacred and precious works of the Mazdeans, truth and philosophy would have been more inclined to agree with history, in bestowing upon that Greek Vandal the title of “the Great”."

"If we carefully trace the terms nazar, and nazaret, throughout the best known works of ancient writers, we will meet them in connection with “Pagan” as well as Jewish adepts. Thus, Alexander Polyhistor says of Pythagoras that he was a disciple of the Assyrian Nazarrt, whom some suppose to be Ezekiel. Diogenes Laertius states most positively that Pythagoras, after being initiated into all the Mysteries of the Greeks and barbarians, “went into Egypt and afterward visited the Chaldeans and Magi;” and Apuleius maintains that it was Zoroaster who instructed Pythagoras. (p. 140)"

"From an ill-natured man take no loan."

"In forming a store of good works thou shouldst be diligent, so that it may come to thy assistance among the spirits."