6th–13th century
The Zen masters
Bodhidharma, Huineng, Linji, Zhaozhou, Yunmen, Wumen and Dogen: the Chan and Zen teachers whose sayings, koans and records shaped the school of sudden awakening. Our lines are translated from the Chinese and Japanese originals.
Every line we carry
Each one links to its source, what it means, and the shirt in any of our looks.
- The great Way has no gate. A thousand roads lead in.
Wumen opens his collection by saying there is no single entrance to the truth. Every path can lead there if you walk it all the way through. Stop looking for the one correct door and start where you are.
Wumenguan (The Gateless Gate), preface verse, our translation from the Chinese
- If nothing useless clutters your mind, every season is a good one.
Spring has flowers, autumn the moon, summer a breeze, winter snow. What spoils the season is the clutter we carry, not the weather. Put down what doesn't matter and any day becomes a good one.
Wumenguan 19, Wumen's verse, our translation from the Chinese
- Eaten your porridge? Then go wash your bowl.
A new monk asked Zhaozhou for instruction and got this. The teaching is the next ordinary task done fully. Practice is not somewhere else; it is in the dishes.
Wumenguan 7, our translation from the Chinese
- The ordinary mind is the Way.
Zhaozhou asked his teacher Nanquan what the Way was. The answer: nothing special, just the everyday mind that eats, walks and works. Stop chasing extraordinary states and pay attention to this one.
Wumenguan 19, our translation from the Chinese
- At the top of a hundred-foot pole, how do you take the next step?
You have climbed as high as the pole goes, and the master asks for one more step. Every achievement becomes a new edge to step off. Don't settle on the summit you already reached.
Wumenguan 46, our translation from the Chinese
- Not the wind, not the flag. Your mind is moving.
Two monks argued over whether the flag or the wind was moving. Huineng pointed them back to the one thing they had overlooked. Much of what disturbs us is happening in the watcher.
Wumenguan 29 (also in the Platform Sutra), our translation from the Chinese
- Originally there is not one thing. Where could dust land?
A rival verse said to polish the mind like a mirror so no dust collects. Huineng answered that at bottom there is no mirror and nothing to soil. Stop scrubbing at a self and see what is actually there.
Platform Sutra 1 (Origins), Huineng's verse, our translation from the Chinese
- Think neither good nor bad. Right now, what is your original face?
Huineng put this question to a monk who had chased him down. Before all your labels and judgments, who are you? Drop the commentary for a moment and look.
Platform Sutra 1 (Origins), our translation from the Chinese
- When lost, a teacher carries you across. Once awake, you carry yourself.
Teachers help when you are confused, but awakening is something only you can do. Huineng said this to his own master as they parted. Take help gratefully, then take responsibility.
Platform Sutra 1 (Origins), our translation from the Chinese
- One lamp can clear a thousand years of darkness.
Darkness has no weight; it does not take a thousand years to undo. One flash of understanding ends long confusion. It is never too late for the light to come on.
Platform Sutra (Zongbao edition), on the reward body, our translation from the Chinese
- Be master wherever you are, and wherever you stand is true.
Linji tells his students not to be pushed around by circumstances or by other people's ideas. Take charge of your own seeing in whatever situation you are in. Then any place becomes the right place.
Record of Linji, instructing the assembly, our translation from the Chinese
- Nothing special. Get dressed, eat, and when you're tired, lie down.
Linji says there is no special effort in the Way: just ordinary life, including the bathroom, done without fuss. Fools laugh, he adds, but the wise understand. Stop straining and live the plain day well.
Record of Linji, instructing the assembly, our translation from the Chinese
- In this lump of red flesh lives a true person of no rank.
Inside your ordinary body is someone with no title, no status and no label, going in and out through your face all day. Linji wants you to notice that one. You are more than your rank.
Record of Linji, first address, our translation from the Chinese
- Meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha.
Linji is not talking about violence; he means cut every attachment, even to the holiest image in your head. Any idol you cling to stands between you and seeing for yourself. Don't let even good ideas become cages.
Record of Linji, instructing the assembly, our translation from the Chinese
- Every day is a good day.
Yunmen asked his monks to say something about the days ahead, then answered for them. Good does not depend on what the day brings. Meet each one as it is.
Blue Cliff Record 6, our translation from the Chinese
- Vast emptiness. Nothing holy.
The emperor asked Bodhidharma for the highest holy truth and got this. Reality is wide open, with no special sacred corner set apart. Stop dividing life into the holy and the ordinary.
Blue Cliff Record 1, our translation from the Chinese
- Study the Way: study yourself. Study yourself: forget yourself.
Dogen says the path leads inward, and the deeper you look the less there is to hold onto. Knowing yourself ends in letting yourself go. Self-study done properly makes you lighter, not heavier.
Shōbōgenzō, Genjōkōan, our translation from the Japanese
- Awakening is the moon in water. The moon stays dry. The water stays whole.
The whole moon fits in a puddle without getting wet or breaking the surface. Awakening, Dogen says, sits in an ordinary person the same way. Nothing has to be torn up for something vast to live in you.
Shōbōgenzō, Genjōkōan, our translation from the Japanese
- A fish swims on and never finds the water's edge.
Fish never reach the end of the water, and birds never reach the end of the sky, yet they never leave them. Life is not a space you finish crossing; it is the element you move in. Swim fully where you are.
Shōbōgenzō, Genjōkōan, our translation from the Japanese
- Flowers fall though we love them. Weeds grow though we hate them.
Our preferences do not run the world. What we cling to slips away and what we resist keeps coming. Seeing that plainly takes a lot of the fight out of life.
Shōbōgenzō, Genjōkōan, our translation from the Japanese