Ladies & Gentlemen 🙏 _All Religions are concepts but not all concepts are religions;_ _If no one had ever invented religions,_ _no one is needed to deny it._ 😊🙏🙇‍♂️🌷

*_Abbot Shohaku Okumura_* 🙏 _The practice is placeless;_ _The path is directionless;_ _The need to find a place or direction;_ _Implies there is a separate self;_ _That is always seeking for something;_ _To happen and needs to happen;_ _When the sense of the separate Self;_ _Is vanquished, no One is there;_ _To seek or practice anything anymore;_ _Suddenly, _*_Oneness_*_ manifests!_ 😊🙏🙇‍♂️🌷

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*Abbot Shohaku Okumura* 🙏 It's impossible to know the purpose of life which itself is an expression of the Universal True Nature localized in an individual's body-mind. And the individual by its sense of a (false temporal) separate self is always earnest to find, know and understand the life purpose of its existence. Which is impossible because its true nature is in an eternal & timeless 'divine' or 'quantum' state of infinite possibilities which cannot be known, predicted, copied or cloned; Why? Because its quantum nature is boundless, timeless & spaceless, for which the finite human mind is unable to 'process' its infinite possibilities of purposes or meanings. 😊🙏🙇‍♂️🌷

The Genuine 'Good for Nothing' Japanese Zen Master ❗... I'm glad that the Brave Nation of Japan is a member of our Western Family of Freedom and Democracy ❗

Wonderful teaching, thank you for sharing this

Lol sounds like Linda Blair in the Exorcist. Excessive silence makes you weïrd and antisocial. Keep senseless advice to yourself.

Full speech link

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Questioning reality that others express to me has always been a conscious practice for me. There is a lot in this talk that resonates with me. I grew up a German Lutheran, and Luther’s small catechism that we studied for communion in my church goes went through the 10 commandments and other creeds and continually asks the question, “What does this mean?” Luther was in the process of questioning and renaming the God that was fed to him by the Catholic Church. For me, he encouraged me to find my relation to God and reality.

I've heard the screen metaphor used on other occasions, but never with this clarity in describing the dichotomy between the real and the fictional creation.

Where is this guy from? The accent has me confused.

Perfect. Zazen, like many other practices is good for nothing.... Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows.....

i am 38 and found out i got adhd that made me realise why i was like this all these years. I wish a school try to help people with ADHd :(

His voice alone is soothing 😌

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." - Buddha Siddhartha Guatama Shakyamuni

Nothing ever happens

*_Abbot Shohaku Okumura_* 🙏 A person is always in confusion because he or she holds onto, or clings onto a sense of an individual personal 'self'. This 'self' is always relentlessly seeking for external things to be achieved so as to fulfill its incessant desires - thinking by this way it can satisfy itself to overcome sufferings or dissatisfactions; Which is futile life endeavor because the 'self' can never satisfied and its dubious nature is unpredictable & fleeting. The 'self' seems to be real but it is unreal. To overcome the 'self' is to practice - *_Right Views_* on all kind of things a person faces in daily life. Right view can cause a person to understand & realize the true underlying nature of causes and effects of things (objects & phenomena) happening and or to happen - of what is real and what is unreal to enable the person to face daily challenges and to overcome it to live wholesomely. 😊🙏🙇‍♂️🌷

Truly we are less like stones and more like waves.

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Abbot Shohaku Okumura 🙏 (To paraphrase) Buddha *_Ji Gong_* says, _(One's True) Nature is the Best Teacher._ 😊🙏🙇‍♂️🌷

Thanks for the upload and teaching!

The cosmos vibrates (hums) through the entirety of its is-ness, small portions of which we humans can experience as sound.

Eyes looking southeast, mind is in the northwest.

The ninety-six kinds of Indian outsiders!

There is a correction to the captions of this video that we are unable to make on KZbin, so please note that at 2:55, 2:58, and 3:29, Abbot Okumura uses the corresponding adjective, "ascetic", to talk about Buddha's strict practice during that period. However, the term has been incorrectly transcribed as "aesthetic", which has a very different meaning. Thank you!

Wow, you used a lot of words to say absolutely nothing. Pat yourself on the back. That has to be an amazing skill.

Abbot *_Shohaku Okumura_* 🙏 _There are no masters or followers;_ _No one to teach, nothing to learn;_ _The Noble Teachings are Pathless;_ _To whom whose mind is abideless;_ _Shall realize the Dharma suddenly;_ _Is the Open Secret of all Practices!_ 😊🙏🙇‍♂️🌷

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My dear friend Richard. He taught one of my favorite classes at DePaul - Mysticism in Religious Traditions. Love love love this guy!!!

Wrong, foor you

Very informing. I felt this tension this morning and I just went outside my room in the sunlight of the hall and did a practice I have of first meditation and then tai chi. I am at heart I would say a contemplative person. Nothing was informing me, from within or without, I was in a space of unknowing. It came to me that I was in contact with my essential reality and Ultimate Reality or God. I came away, I believe connected again to my authenticity,.

It sounds so dramatic 😂

In other words we have to have the false in order to know the real.

What a bliss just to listen to this wonderfull human being ...

Sometimes a smile tells you how high a zen person you are meeting❤❤

Thanks!

Thank you. This is a great way to talk about God in demystified language in my contemporary existence. It seems to me that just talking about God maybe with a biblical story and not reflecting on its meaning in my life, distances me from the presence of God in my life. If you’re like me, I see I live in a plentitude of different kinds of relationships.

Question, you say that this form of meditation does not have a technique, but then you give a technique of sitting facing a wall with eyes open and breathing a certain way....this is a technique, no?

bravo, brilliant, Gassho

Retirement is teaching me that education never stops. I just never ever expected to be suddenly curious about Harry Potter. 😇

If i could ask the Abbott a question it would be how does Zens view of total reality differ from Ramana Maharshi's teavhings on the Self? Nice channel.

Ask Christ. Christ is king.

Sure as hell not asking you! I'll be dead by the time you spit out your answer.

imagine being the first ones😮

Simply but profoundly and beautifully put 🙏

*_Abbot Shohaku Okumura_* 🙏 (Quote & Unquote) Some belief ideologies are based on the weird teachings of fear, punishment & reward and to be saved hereafter life ie Eternal Salvation to Paradise or Heaven as a personal Redemption. Followers are taught to simply believe and pray to its (only) Supreme God Head or Divine Personality for personal salvation of their sinful self, so that they shall go to Paradise (reward) of eternal enjoyment & life. If they don't or to non-believers they shall be condemned to Hell (punishment) of eternal suffering hereafter life. In practice, no doubting or questioning of the religious Verses, Sayings or Scriptures is encouraged or even allowed because the Scriptures say - "For It Is Written" - are the words or revelations of the ultimate Divine Personality, so just simply follow, believe, pray, worship and idolise it till the End of the Day. It's a kind of primitive "carrot & stick" fixated beliefs or religious ideologies by indoctrination to make a mockery of the human intellect, wisdom, development, evolution of Humans and its Nature . It's simply implausible for these kinds of ''fairy tales" belief ideologies to be taken in and to believe in it - not by the many modern, educated and independent thinking people in these modern & scientific forward moving times of the present to future. 😊🙏🙇‍♂️🌷

Is it possible to practice zazen without achieving any of the traditional poses (quarter, half, full-lotus, etc.)? Thanks---