Feb 16 2009
Great Words Acting As Inspiration
In the words of J. Krishnamurti: “To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still. But if you think I am going to achieve stillness at some future date, I have destroyed the possibility of stillness. It is now or never. That is a very difficult thing to understand, because we are still thinking of heaven in terms of time.”
What the teacher is saying here is what many Zen masters have said. Words have so many ways of pointing to the same thing and our relative mind seems to need as many variations as we can get, and there is nothing I like better than reading the writings of great spiritual teachers.
But the words are not the practice. In zazen, focusing on the breathing, the exhalation and inhalation, without any thoughts of gaining enlightenment, is what is ultimately required; for enlightenment exists in a timeless domain. But in the meantime, the words of the masters will indeed act as a great inspiration.
