The Koan Brothers
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thekoanbrothers.bsky.social
The Koan Brothers
@thekoanbrothers.bsky.social
790 followers 160 following 180 posts
On the path of Rinzai Zen #rinzai #zen #bodhidharma #buddhism #hakuin
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Let‘s not take this too seriously.

Try to follow me without being attached!
“If your mind is on your opponent, you are his guest. If your mind abides nowhere, you are the host.”

- Takuan Sōhō
“When the host meets the host, they do not greet each other. When the guest meets the guest, they do not recognize each other.”

- Yunmen
In this lump of red flesh there is a true person of no rank, who is always going in and out of the gates of your face. Those who have not yet testified to this, look! Look!

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood and the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are all made of star-stuff.”

- Carl Sagan
"What Zen values is not the trance-like Samadhi, but the functional Samadhi"

Meido Moore Roshi
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

C.G.Jung
POV after morning Zazen.
Japanese snow fairy bird 🇯🇵 😃
Reddit-gang!

Come an check out our sub at
r/zenpractice
Recent science shows that life may have not started in the primordial soup, but in the crevices and cracks of the primordial ocean's coast.

When I listen to my inhales and exhales, I wonder if our breathing function was shaped by the coming and going of the waves that crashed into these places.
"A physicist is a hydrogen atom’s way of learning about hydrogen atoms."

- Carl Sagan
"When sitting in Zazen, I become nothing, and everything becomes nothing.
That is to say, I and everything melt into one. So when I see a flower, the flower is I. When I see the moon, the moon is I. All things become I. There is no greater love than this."

- Yamada Mumon Roshi
"The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow"

William Blake
They are not long,
the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

They are not long,
the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while,
then closes
Within a dream.

- Ernest Dowson
"In the same way a dam prevents the leakage of water, samadhi prevents the leakage if wisdom"

Dogen
The four Brahma Viharas:

Metta (loving kindness)

Karuna (empathy and compassion)

Mudita (sympathetic joy)

Upeka (open-hearted equanimity)

If each of us can practice each one of these even just once a day, the world will be a better place.
Thank you! I will try to get it.
Beautiful. If I were to read one Mary Oliver book of poetry — which one would you recommend?
Practice doesn’t mean that you have to manifest continuity like a string connecting beads — you just have to become each bead, in each moment.


All beings are primarily Buddhas,
Like water and ice,
There is no ice apart from water,
There are no Buddhas apart from beings.

- Hakuin Ekaku, Song of Zazen