From the Empty into the Void

A BEGINNER'S MIND is empty; therefore it is receptive. Yours, on the other hand, is full-to-overflowing with useless rubbish that leaves no room for anything new to enter. Buddha himself could whisper secrets in your ear and you wouldn't hear a single word because you think you already know everything. But here's one thing you don't know: why are you not happy? Why are you not satisfied? Until you know the answer to this question, nothing else really matters
and you know it.

The world is my family but, like most families, mine is nutty as a fruitcake—nuttier, actually, because a fruitcake wouldn't destroy the oven that baked it, or attack the hostess who served it. It's just a fruitcake. But us! The human race is destroying its own life support system in blind pursuit of God-knows-what, and this is madness—that is to say, a non-sustainable course of action.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the world itself is fundamentally an illusion. How can the cake be real if the ingredients are only a figment of their own imagination? How can the dream be real if the dreamer exists only in his own dream? Think about it.

My work is not to resist even this ridiculous urge to pour useless words that no one will understand from the empty into the void. There is nothing to attain. Simply disown the seeking mind and instantly you are free.

Standing face-to-face with his own mortality, the wise man thinks only of freedom from the cycle of birth and death. You see yourself as you see your reflection in a mirror. But if you put down the mirror, what happens to the reflection? It returns to your face.

Peace.