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Dropping Ashes on the Buddha Summary
About Dropping Ashes on the Buddha Book
The classic guide for Zen students pursuing the true way.
“Somebody comes into the Zen center with a lighted cigarette, walks up to the Buddha-statue, blows smoke in its face and drops ashes on its lap. You are standing there. What can you do?” This is a problem that Zen Master Seung Sahn was fond of posing to his American students who attended his Zen centers.
Dropping Ashes on the Buddha is a delightful, irreverent, and often hilariously funny living record of the dialogue between Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn and his American students. Consisting of dialogues, stories, formal Zen interviews, Dharma speeches, and letters using the Zen Master’s actual words in spontaneous, living interaction, this book is a fresh presentation of the Zen teaching method of “instant dialogue” between Master and student which, through the use of astonishment and paradox, leads to an understanding of ultimate reality.
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Before thinking
To understand the truth, you must let go of the situation. A clear mind has no inside and no outside. A clear mind is clear of thinking.
2 Buddhist monks were fighting over a flag. One said the flag was moving. The other said the wind is. The master however said it was neither the flag nor the wind. "Your thoughts are the only ones moving."
Nature has no contradictions. Our problems exist just in our head. Our thinking is making us deluded. One had to let go of 🤔 to understand Zen.
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The Substance
All in existence is made of the same substance. All the names and categories are made from our 🤔. Thinking takes away from the Substance.
Some said this substance is energy, God or matter. The Substance is Absolute.
This idea is a blend of Taoism combined with Buddhist concepts.
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The don‘t know mind
What are you? You don't know. There is only "I don't know". Always keep this don't know mind with you, and your mind will become clear. And only then you will understand.
Throw away all your opinions and only keep the mind that does not know. That is the mind before thinking. That is your substance.
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