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Shohaku Okumura Biography

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“It's important to see that it's not life that causes suffering but our expectation that life should be the way we want.”

Book:The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

Source: The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“When we have difficulties, we might start to practice zazen to find a way out. Some people seek worldly success with meditation, using it as training in concentration, spontaneity, or bravery. Others aspire to be released from everyday life by some kind of enlightenment experience. Either way, we search because we feel a lack. When we practice zazen with this attitude, what happens in our minds is the same as when we struggle for fame and profit. As long as we practice zazen with seeking mind, we create samsara within our practice.”

Zazen Seeking Mind

Book:The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

Source: The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“Zazen should not be defiled by our desires—even the desire for enlightenment or becoming a buddha.”

Book:The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

Source: The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“Because I practiced good-for-nothing zazen with devotion, I felt my life was justified. Yet this intensity of practice was possible only when I was young, strong, and healthy. In this way I discovered arrogance in a deep layer of my mind.”

Arrogance Zazen

Book:The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

Source: The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“Just sitting, which is good for nothing, is the ultimate posture of freedom from greed.”

Zazen Just Sitting

Book:The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

Source: The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“If we're ambitious and desire to become rich and cannot do so, that's a failure. But if we have no such desire, there can be neither failure nor success.”

Success Failure

Author:Shohaku Okumura