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Quote by Ehsan Sehgal

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Ehsan Sehgal

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“For Zen Buddhism, historical narratives do matter; stories of the "transmission of the lamp" of the awakened mind down through the ages constitute the narrative thread that holds the history of Zen together, supporting the continuity and authority of its institutional tradition. But what matters most to many sincere Zen practitioners, especially today, is how the teachings and practices embedded in those stories can illuminate and change our lives-not when, where, and by whom they were first taught and written down.”

Zen BuddhismTransmission
Book:Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhism
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“The job of a Zen master is to transmit the dharma. The word dharma is a cognate of the Pali word for carrying. The dharma that is passed from teacher to student involves the essential teachings of the Buddha and the spirit of living those truths. Transmission is applied both to the ritual identification and acknowledgment of a particular student as the legitimate successor, or dharma heir, of a Zen master, and to the ordinary, daily interactions between the teacher and all students. Transmit is an oddly technical verb, and the analogies it occasions are oddly useful. If you imagine the dharma as an electrical current arcing across a distance from one conductive wire to another, you get the basic idea. However, if you have even a rudimentary grasp of physics, you know that the power of an electrical charge decreases as it travels this way This is precisely what is not supposed to happen to the dharma as it passes from master to disciple. A dharma heir is meant to be someone whose enlightenment or understanding equals or, preferably, surpasses that of the master.”

DharmaTransmissionZen Master
Book:Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center
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“Fils, s'il t'est donné de vivre, tu rencontreras sur ta route des hommes qui sont suivis par des troupeaux de montagnes. Des hommes qui arrivent dans des pays, nus et crus. On remarque à peine que leurs mains ouvertes éclairent l'ombre comme des veilleuses. Quand on le remarque. Et voilà que les montagnes se lèvent et marchent à leur suite. Et voilà que tous les mécaniciens de raison tapent du poing sur leurs tables. Voilà qu'ils crient : « Il y a dix ans que je cherche des formules, dix ans que je noircis du papier, dix ans que j'use des arithmétiques. Dix ans que je cherche le bouton secret ». Et celui-là est arrivé et il a dit tout simplement : « Montagne » et puis la montagne s'est dressée. Où est la justice ? « Elle est là, fiston la justice. L'espérance… »”

JusticeTransmissionMontagneEspérance
Book:Blue Boy
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