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"Fundamentally, our experience as experienced is not different from the Zen master's. Where we differ is that we place a fog, a particular kind of conceptual overlay onto that experience and then make an emotional investment in that overlay, taking it to be 'real' in and of itself."

Unknown
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"Don’t ponder: You don’t need to figure everything out. Discursive thinking won’t free you from the trap. In meditation, the mind is purified naturally by mindfulness, by wordless bare attention. Habitual deliberation is not necessary to eliminate those things that are keeping you in bondage. All that is necessary is a clear, non-conceptual perception of what they are and how they work. That alone is sufficient to dissolve them. Concepts and reasoning just get in the way. Don’t think. See."

Bhante Gunaratana
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"The Bodhisattva teaches that views are viewless and that one does not toil over getting rid of views, only afterward to have viewlessness.
The Bodhisattva does not reject birth-and-death to enter nirvana because birth-and-death is identical to nirvana."

Bodhidharma
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"Seeing into your own nature is Buddhahood."

Bassui
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"The Dharma will not serve us well if all we do is comply with rules or follow directions. Understanding the Buddha's teaching on clinging to the meditation practice can help us break free of our attachments to forms and traditions, methods and techniques, and notions about practice so that we can see directly what constitutes our suffering, how we got there, how we let go, and how it feels to be free."

Ajahn Mun
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Another "coincidence"
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Since there are no two such things as
practice and practitioner,
if, by those who practice or do not practice,
the practitioner of practice is seen not to exist,
thereupon the goal of practice is reached
and also the end of practice itself.

Padmasambhava
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"On my own with the vastness, I had encountered the very insight that did the work of exposing the fear and releasing its hold. I realized that the mind had been clinging tenaciously to the erroneous notion that the presence of fear meant something about the validity of the experience of no-self. Fear had tricked the mind into taking its presence to mean something that it did not. Fear was present, yes, but that was it! The presence of fear in no way invalidated the experience that no personal self existed. It only meant that fear was present.
"Fear didn't need to go anywhere for the personal self to be seen to be non-existent. After all, where could it possibly go? It had never existed. Nothing needed to change or be eradicated; nothing needed to do anything at all but to be. Everything occurs simultaneously--form and emptiness, pain and enlightenment, fear and awakening. Once seen, it seemed so incredibly simple.
"Fear's grip now broke, and joy arose at once. The experience of emptiness had given up its secret. The emptiness was seen to be nothing but the very substance of everything. I finally saw what had been in front of me the whole time but had been obscured by fear: There is not only no individual self, but also no other. No self, no other. Everything is made of the same substance of vastness."

Suzanne Segal
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"If the only prayer you say in your life is thank you,
that would suffice."

Meister Eckhart
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You don't have to systematically unravel all the karmic knots in order to be free from them. You only need to realize, to recognize, their emptiness. This is what Manjusri, the Bodhisattva or Buddha of Wisdom's sword symbolizes: the cutting through the apparent conditioning that apparently binds us by recognizing that this conditioning, these emotional chains of delusion, are not inherently real. They are a mass, a knot of interdependent ideas, each of which have no reality and thus have no collective reality. But we could, and do, spend an apparent eternity undoing them through therapy or meditation, when we could wield our sword of wisdom, and recognize their true nature, their emptiness of independent inherent reality, and be free.
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"We are here and now fully a Realized Being telling ourselves we are not, by saying, 'I need this,' 'I am limited by that.' All we need to do is to stop feeling that we are limited and start being the unlimited being that we really are."

Lester Levenson
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What stands between you and happiness is everything you do to achieve happiness.
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"The categories of permanence and impermanence cannot be applied to that which is unborn."

Gaudapada
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"As long as I am this or that, or have this or that, I am not all things and I have not all things. Become pure till you neither are nor have either this or that; then you are omnipresent and, being neither this nor that, are all things."

Meister Eckhart
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"Discover who the sufferer is and on discovering this you find all joy."

Lester Levenson
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And see the 'coincidental' post on Kathleen's Ineffable Bliss today:
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When there is realization...
One cannot say that there is existence or nonexistence...

The Adornment of Sutras
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Bodhisattva Louis Armstrong

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"If everyone just stays in the Buddha-mind, that's all he has to do--that takes care of everything. Why do you want to go and think up other things to do? There's no need to. Just dwell in the Unborn. You're eager to make this extra work for yourself--but all you're doing is creating illusion. Stop doing that. Stay in the Unborn. The Unborn and its marvelous illumination are perfectly realized in the Buddha-mind."

Bankei
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"The true nature of the mind is sometimes called Mahamudra and sometimes Dzogchen. Mahasiddhas have explained it in a way that is easier to understand: the nature of mind is the natural or ordinary mind, which is completely uncontrived and always has been. This ordinary mind is very close, always present, and empty by nature, but also has luminosity. So the buddhas, by seeing that natural state of the mind, have realized the true nature. Primordially, the true nature of mind is empty; it has never arisen and it never ceases, and so it is birthless. But it isn't just a material voidness. It has the quality of luminosity, so the mind is the union of luminosity and emptiness. By hearing and contemplating the teachings and through inference and reasoning, we can understand the presence of this true nature of mind. Or, through the practice of meditation, we can understand the true nature of mind."

Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche
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"...but my dear, you've had the power to go home all along!"
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Oh, and see Don's 'coincidental' posting On Awakening today on his blog:

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Are practices necessary, or, once having realized the Natural State, is just resting there enough? And is the realization of your True Nature something that needs a practice to make happen? And, is that realization necessarily going to come with a big explosion of bliss and lights, or could it be as simple as recognizing what has always been the case? Can you just rest, here and now, and let that be your practice? Could that be enough, even for so-called 'beginners' on the spiritual path? Or for so-called 'advanced' practitioners, for that matter.
Do you have to read the books, once you know that Peace is who you are, and maybe all you have to do is rest in that ever-present sense of Being, prior to all concepts, worldly or spiritual? Could it be possible that merely hearing the title of books like Be Here Now or What's Wrong With Right Now, Unless You Think About It? might do the trick?
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Don't try to figure it all out. Just Rest in That Ever-Present sense of Being, which is what You Truly Are, prior to all obscurations and thought. This Resting cleanses what appears to bind you and reveals the Freedom that never has not been Here.
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"Diverse sufferings are like the death of a child in a dream. By apprehending illusory appearances as real, one becomes weary. Therefore, when encountering disagreeable circumstances, viewing them as illusory is the Bodhisattva's practice."

from the Thirty-Seven Bodhisattva Practices
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"When encountering pleasing sense objects, though they appear beautiful like a rainbow in summertime, not to regard them as real and to abandon clinging attachment is the Bodhisattva's practice."

from the Thirty-Seven Bodhisattva Practices
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"Appearances are one's own mind. From the beginning, mind's nature is free from the extremes of elaboration. Knowing this, not to engage the mind in subject-object duality is the Bodhisattva's practice."

from The Thirty-Seven Bodhisattva Practices
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We seem to be on a Ramana kick. Thanks to Kathiji for alerting us to this one. Check it out:

10 minute footage of Ramana Maharshi

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4070950622029595051&q=Ramana

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"The Self is always realized. But only you do not recognize the fact. "

Ramana
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"Everyday life is not divorced from the Eternal State. So long as the daily life is imagined to be different from the spiritual life these difficulties arise. If the spiritual life is rightly understood the active life will be found to be not different from it."

Ramana

"If this false identity drops away, ignorance vanishes and Truth is revealed."

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Thanks for this to Serenity:


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"And the only thing that needs to be seen is that there's nothing to be seen. There's nothing to get. There's nothing to do. Just to be finished with looking anywhere for anything that you think you need. And you are free in this moment to do that. This is perhaps the only choice."

John Sherman
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