A Short Primer on Buddhism

1) 諸行無常 ( しょぎょむじょう) Shogyo mujo – All things are impermanent

2) 諸法無我 (しょほうむが) Shoho muga – All existing things are selfless

3) 涅槃寂静 (ねはんジャクじょう) Nehan jakujo – Tranquil and extinguished

In short; “all things are impermanent. It is therefore, absurd to have attachment to them. When you understand that phenomenal things in this world exist interdependently, you spontaneously feel gratitude and repentance for evil deeds. When desires such as attachment subside, you can gain peace of mind.”

The direct participation in this very mind by way of Shikantaza (Zen meditation) is ultimately the Zen method of training and the path to equanimity through compassion.

“Accept only that which contributes to the well-being of yourself and others.”
-unknown

Looking for the truth ?

The true way naturally transcends such opposites. It joins life with death, wisdom with foolishness, the ordinary with the divine.

Sometimes God shows us a world replete with wisdom and foolishness, daily practice, life and death, saints and sinners. Other times, the clarity and the confusion and the growth and the decay and the saints and the sinners and the everything else all vanish into nameless-ness. The true way naturally transcends such opposites. It joins life with death, wisdom with foolishness, the ordinary with the divine. Be that as it may – the blossoms you adore will wither and fall; the weeds you abhor will flourish and sprawl. The fool bustles around trying to figure out what things are. The wise man lets things move along and tell him what he is. The wise man understands completely how little he understands. The fool completely fails to understand how much he does. Ignorance is self-perpetuating. Wisdom is self-reinforcing. The truly wise are not self-consciously so. But their proven wisdom continues to prove itself. When we experience sights and sounds, body and mind outstretched, we do so directly, not as reflections in a mirror, not as the moon and the water. Seeing one thing we are blind to others. As you learn the right way, you will learn who you are. As you learn who you are, you will forget who you are. As you forget who you are, things show you what you are. As things show you what you are, the gap between your body and mind, and that of others, will drop away. And the hidden vestiges of this process will echo on and on. Start off by going out and looking for the truth, and you only distance yourself from it. Accept the truth in yourself. and before you know it you will become who you really are.

-excerpt from Genjo Koan by Dogen 1233