Lanxi Daolong

"Zen practice is not clarifying conceptual distinctions, but throwing away one's preconceived views and notions and the sacred texts and all the rest, and piercing through the layers of coverings over the spring of self behind them. All the holy ones have turned within and sought in the self, and by this went beyond all doubt. To turn within means all the twenty-four hours and in every situation, to pierce one by one through the layers covering the self, deeper and deeper, to a place which cannot be described. It is when thinking comes to an end and making distinctions ceases, when wrong views and ideas disappear of themselves without having to be driven forth, when without being sought the true action and true impulse appear of themselves. It is when one can know what is the truth of the heart."

"Thirty years and more I worked to nullify myself. Now I leap the leap of death. The ground churns up The skies spin round."

"[T]here are those poems so absorbed in the great unknown that death becomes nearly indistinguishable from life. The jisei [or dead poem] of Rankei Doryu, who died in 1278, reads [like that]... The death haiku of Choha, who died in 1740, also evokes this silence."