Credits: venusbby on pinterest, they also Is available here on tumblr but I am not so sure of their tumblr username.

Paranirvana of Sakyamuni Buddha.

'The bad news is you're falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there's no ground.” -Chögyam Trungpa

Nagarjuna, Sixty Stanzas on Reasoning

It's exactly what you don't think.

"If we take hold of something that has a particular form, saying, 'Yes, this is it! This is the truth!' we have then made Truth merely an idea. Soon we begin to discuss it and weigh it. But no matter how long we discuss such things, we will never find solutions to any of our questions. In time we will discover our idea doesn't always work. It's just relative.

Our problem is that we believe our relative truths are Absolute. This is why we are always fighting each other. We always try to get everything into our hands. We ignore the fact that whatever we can get into our hands is only what we have been able to measure by our yardstick. You can't possess Absolute as a form; you can't hold it in your hand. It is before any form appears. When we try to speak of it, naturally, negative terms appear.

People sometimes misunderstand Buddhism because it often uses expressions like no eyes, no ears, no nose, no heart, no mind, no self, no consciousness, and so forth. Sometimes they think Buddhism is nihilistic. But Buddhism is not nihilistic. It is not about the destruction of existence. It is about seeing the world before we measure it. There is nothing to pin down because the reality we are living is constantly changing. Yet, while there's nothing to pin down, nothing to hold in our hand, still we have the sense of 'I am here.' And then we take hold of that idea. This is why everyone is confused."

- Dainin Katagiri, from You Have Something to Say: Manifesting Zen Insight, 1999.

SUNYATA

Sunyata is a central concept of Mahayana Buddhism and is seen not as a negation of existence but rather as the undifferentiated out of which all apparent entities, distinctions, and dualities arise. In other words Sunyata is not nothing.

Consider the material basis of the universe. As we now understand it, within the fundamental nature of matter, there is no solid entity only the probability that if there was a solidity entity, as a whole or as a constituent it would most likely be located in some position and less likely elsewhere, but in reality there is no solidity to energy, only patterns within an appreciating conciousness.

So the meaning of Sunyata is shown in the patterns determined by the flux of energy within a concious system. Emptiness becomes form and form is none other than emptiness within the intertwining streams of conciousness.

“In seeing things To be or not to be, Fools fail to see A world at ease.”

--Nagarjuna || on enlightenment through realizing emptiness. 

Pranayama breathing technique Is extremely worth It to do so for getting relaxed for the void state ♡♡♡

“Podemos enumerar una cantidad de virtudes prescritas para los monjes, tanto budistas cuanto cristianos: pobreza, tribulación, discreción, obediencia, humildad, abstinencia de todo juicio hacia el prójimo, meditación, silencio, simplicidad y muchas otras; pero la más fundamental de todas ellas, en mi opinión, es la pobreza. Ontológicamente la pobreza corresponde a la Vacuidad, y en términos psicológicos es igual a la desyoización, a la Inocencia [paradisíaca]. Aquella vida que otrora disfrutamos en el Jardín del Edén simboliza a la Inocencia. La grave pregunta que el tiempo nos plantea a nosotros, hombres modernos, exigiéndonos una solución perentoria, es cómo recuperar esta mentalidad primitiva, o mejor tal vez, cómo advertir que aún la poseemos, en plena industrialización y rodeados de la propaganda en favor de la ‘vida fácil’. En otras palabras: ¿cómo actualizar la sabiduría trascendental del Prajna en un mundo que nos exhorta a acrecer el Conocimiento a diestra y siniestra, de mil y un modos? Debemos hallar una respuesta; y esto es urgente. Ya no volverán los días de los Padres del Desierto: velamos a la espera de un nuevo sol que se eleve sobre el horizonte del egoísmo y la sordidez, en todo sentido”. 

‘Conocimiento e Inocencia’, D.T Szuki (El Zen y los pájaros del deseo).

The Hand of Sakyamuni Buddha.

On Being, Sanity, and Abject Wonder

The only sane response to being is abject wonder.

Indeed, when we drift from sanity we’ve done but untethered from wonder, and its bedfellow, unknowing.

Our lives are short and prone to fraying at the edges, when not coming undone entirely.

Frantically trying to keep them together we lose sight of the wider context in which they exist, as but twisted fibrous strands in the threads that weave the fabric of reality.

These strands, too comprised of but smaller, loosely relating bits of this and that hold together with but the friction that we have a tendency to complain of and otherwise condemn.

Constantly we seek release from the tension that holds us (and indeed all things) together, instead of finding ourselves stilled at the profundity of the ability and seeming willingness of anything to come together and hold on amidst the void that envelopes, runs through, and otherwise pervades as it all.

We know and can know relatively little about the wider picture. But a lack of knowing isn’t at all the problem, rather a lack of inference and feeling that renders the gratitude, the surrender, and yes, the wonder that springs from unknowing.

~Sunyananda

Life, Death, Life

Note: I started writing this post way back in December, but have been mulling over it for quite a while. The fact that I post this on the day before Nirvana Day (the death of the Buddha) is serendipity. 😏

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