So… a long time ago, back in the land of Zen, there was a monastery. This monastery had two wings. There were 1000 monks in the monastery. Half of them, 500, were on one wing and half of them, 500, were on the other wing. The master had this beautiful cat. The cat was so …
Jan 29: Rinjai's Cat
Published: Sun, 01/29/23
More Enlightened People Available Today
There are more enlightened people available today than there have ever been.
Spiritual Bickering
Our Zen story this week is about spiritual bickering. You would think that spiritual people would be the people that would get along the most, right? You’d think that because we believe in love that everyone should magically get along. Somehow it doesn’t work out, does it? It always seems to go wrong in every …
If Enlightenment Looked Like Something
So one of my own little says is, “If enlightenment looked like something… then everyone would try to look enlightened.”
Proving Your Meditation
In the story of Rinjai’s cat, killing the cat was really, really stupid. But the point of this story is that we have the same fantasies about spirituality today. We think spiritualty will look like something… and we also think the enlightened master would have to be perfect in all ways. What Zen is trying …
What is Real?
So what’s real and what’s not? In the story of Rinjai’s Cat the master is asking all of these monks to simply be able to show him that they know the difference between what’s real and what’s not real. He’s asking them to be able to show their meditation, but that’s not to show how …
