Dropping Ashes on the Buddha by Zen Master Seung Sahn. [Part 3]

Dropping Ashes on the Buddha by Zen Master Seung Sahn. Compiled & edited by Stephen Mitchell

Hello again, welcome to the final part of this three-part series.

We’ll simply pick up from where we left off in part two, as we further draw back the curtains to the teaching of Zen Master Seung Sahn. In case you’ve missed the beginning, you can also click here for part one.

Without further ado, please enjoy part three of the series.

Special Medicine and Big Business

• Taking the medicine in order to understand is good. Taking the medicine because of the good feelings it gives you is not so good.
• It is very easy to become attached to special medicine.
• When your body is sick, it is sometimes necessary to take a strong drug. But when you are healthy, you don’t take drugs.
• Many people take special medicine to understand themselves; but their understanding is only thinking. It is not attainment. True attainment of emptiness means that all thinking has been cut off.
• True hippies have no hindrance.
• Having no hindrance means not being attached to anything.
• If you’re working and earning money in order to help other people, then Zen is business, business is Zen.

Miracles

• Many people want miracles, and if they witness miracles, they become very attached to them.
• Karma that you have made for yourself can only disappear if you want it to. No one can make you want it to disappear.
• The Buddha said, “it is impossible to make merited karma disappear. But most people want easy solutions. They want someone else to do their work for them.
• If a mother does everything for the child, her child will come to depend on her. A good mother makes the child do things for itself. then it will grow up strong and independent.
• Magic is only a technique. Some people know how to do card trick. It looks as if they have done something magical, but it is really a trick. We don’t see what is actually happening. What we call magic is the same. It is taking a person’s consciousness and manipulating it.
• The only way to make karma disappear is for your consciousness to become empty.

A little Thinking, A little Sparring

The Zen teacher handed a cup of water to one of the students, and said, “Drink this.”

The student drank.

The teacher said, “Is it hot or cold?”

The student was silent for a few moments, then said, “It taste good.”

The Zen teacher said, “This is thinking.

When you drank the water, you were not thinking.

When I asked you if it was hot or cold, you were thinking, ‘what answer is good?’ This is thinking.

When you drank, you only drank.

No-Attainment Is Attainment

In true emptiness, there is no name and no form. So, there is no attainment. explains the Zen teacher, If you say, ‘I have attained true emptiness,’ you are wrong.”

• If you talk, don’t be attached to talking.
• If you are attached to your thinking, this creates karma.
• If you keep this mind… seeing is the same as not seeing, hearing is the same as not hearing, working is the same as not working. This is no-attachment thinking.
• If you understand emptiness, this is not emptiness. It is only a word.
• True Zen means to become clear. Beautiful words and hard sitting are important. But attachment to them is very dangerous.

Zen and the Arts

• When you were born, you were only born. you didn’t say, as you were coming out of your mother’s womb; Now I am going into the world. Help me. You just came, without wanting to be born or knowing why you were born. It is the same with death. When you die, you only die. You are not free to choose.

• if you are thinking, your mind, my mind, and all people’s minds are different. if you are not thinking, your mind, my mind, and all people’s minds are the same.
• if you cut off all thinking, this mind is before thinking. if you keep the before-thinking mind and I keep the before-thinking mind, we become one mind.
• Zen is understanding your true self. you must ask yourself, ‘What am I?’ You must keep this great question and cut off all your thinking.
• if you are not thinking, you are one with your action.
• not-thinking is before thinking. you are the whole universe; the universe is you.
• In Zen there is no outside and no inside. There is only the one mind, which is just like this. This is the life of all the arts, and it is the life of Zen.”

Plastic Flowers, Plastic Mind 

• Buddha said, ‘When one mind is pure, the whole universe is pure; when one mind is tainted, the whole universe is tainted.
• when the mind is happy, the whole universe is happy. If you desire something, then you are attached to it.
• I don’t like plastic, is the same as ‘I like plastic’—both are attachments.
• put it all down. Then you won’t be hindered by anything. You won’t care whether the flowers are plastic or real, whether they are on the alter or in the garbage pail.
• A real flower is just a real flower. You mustn’t be attached to name and form. said the zen master.
• Buddha is not attached to name and form, he doesn’t care whether the flowers are real or plastic, he only cares about the person’s mind.
• Your mind rejects plastic flowers, so you have separated the universe into good and bad, beautiful and ugly.
• This mind is like the great sea, into which all waters flow. The sea doesn’t say, ‘Your water is dirty, you can’t flow into me.’ It accepts all waters and mixes them, and all become sea. So, if you keep the Buddha mind, your mind will be like the great sea. This is the great sea of enlightenment.”

About Zen Master, Seungsahn Haengwon

Seungsahn Haengwon (August 1, 1927 – November 30, 2004), born Duk-In Lee, was a Korean Seon master of the Jogye Order and founder of the international Kwan Um School of Zen.

He was the seventy-eighth Patriarch in his lineage. As one of the early Korean Zen masters to settle in the United States.

He opened many temples and practice groups across the globe, was known for his charismatic style and direct presentation of Zen, which was well tailored for the Western audience, and his many correspondences with them through letters. He died in Seoul, South Korea, at age 77.

About the Editor: Stephen Mitchell has written many books, including a translation of the bestselling, The Tao Te Ching, The Gospel According to Jesus and Gilgamesh. You can read extensive excerpts from all of his books on his website, www.stephenmitchellbooks.com