Your worst enemy cannot harm you
as much as your own thoughts, unguarded.
But once mastered,
no one can help you as much,
not even your father or your mother.
- The Buddha
The best way to put it is that for Dzogchen rigpa is the view, the meditation, the conduct, and the result. RIgpa is also the basis, the path, and the result. Rigpa is hearing, contemplation, and meditation. RIgpa is shila, samadhi and prajn̄�. Rigpa is creation and completion. Rigpa is three series of Dzogchen. Nothing is outside rigpa.
~ Namdrol
As a mongoose approaches a snake to seize it only after having
supplied his own body with medicine, so too, the meditator, the earnest
student of meditation, on approaching this world is abounding as it is
in anger and malice, plagued by quarrels, strife, contention and hatred,
must anoint his mind with the medicine of love.
Milindapanha 394
Ch'an master Hui Hai
Q: Where can one enter the doorway to this understanding? A: Through the perfection of charity (dana-paramita). Q: Buddha has said that the six paramitas are the action of the Bodhisattva path, so how can we enter the doorway to this understanding by practicing, as you have said, only the dana-paramita? A: People who are confused or deluded do not understand that the other five paramitas all evolve from the dana-paramita. Therefore, in practicing the dana-paramita, one also fulfills the practice of the other five paramitas. Q: For what reason is it called the dana-paramita? A: "Dana" means the perfection of charity. Q: What things can be given up in the name of charity? A: Clinging to thoughts of duality can be given up. Q: Just what does this mean? A: It means to give up clinging, in the name of charity, to thoughts of good and evil, existence and non-existence, love and hate, emptiness and fullness, concentration and non-concentration, pure and impure, etc. In the name of charity, give up all of them. Then, and only then, can you attain the stage of the voidness of duality, while, at the same time, letting neither a thought about the voidness of opposites nor about charity arise. This is the genuine practice of the dana-paramita, which is also known as absolute detachment from all phenomena. This is only the voidness of all dharma-nature, which means that always and everywhere is just no-mind. If one can attain the stage of no-mind everywhere, no form will be perceived, because our self-nature is void, containing no form. This, then, is true Reality, which is also called the wonderful form or body of the Tathagata. The Diamond Sutra says: "Those who have abandoned all forms are called Buddhas."
As Zen has no gates, nothing is not of Zen;
everything can be an entry point into Zen,
we can be enlightened by anything.
N�g�rjuna states:
‘Is’ is holding to permanence,
‘Is not’ is an annihilationist view.
Because of that, is and is not
are not made into a basis by the wise.
Those who assert dependent phenomena
As like moons in water,
As not real and not unreal,
Are not tricked by views.
Nagarjuna.
The Brahmin Unnabha asked Venerable Ananda: "What is the aim of living the holy life under the recluse Gotama?"
"It is for the sake of abandoning desire."
"Is there a way, a practice by which to abandon this desire?"
"There is a way - it is by means of the psychic powers of
desire, energy, thought and consideration together with concentration
and effort."
"If that is so, Venerable Ananda, then it is a task without end.
Because to get rid of one desire by means of another is impossible."
"Then I will ask you a question; answer as you like. Before,
did you not have the desire, the energy, the thought and consideration
to come to this park? And having arrived, did not that desire, that
energy, that thought and that consideration cease?"
"Yes, it did."
"Well, for one who has destroyed the defilements, once he has
won enlightenment, that desire, that energy, that thought and that
consideration he had for enlightenment has now ceased."
~ Samyutta Nikaya V.272
Earth, mountains, rivers – hidden in this nothingness.
In this nothingness –
earth, mountains, rivers revealed.
Spring flowers, winter snows:
There’s
no being or non-being, nor denial itself.
- Saisho (circa 1490) Zen
Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter, p.32 Translated by Lucien Stryk and Takashi
Ikemoto
若想佛法兴，唯有僧赞僧.
if want Buddhism to flourish, a way is to have sangha to praise the sangha.
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