--The Laughing Buddha--

Anyone walking about Chinatowns in America will observe statues of a stout fellow carrying a linen sack. Chinese merchants call him Happy Chinaman or Laughing Buddha.

This Hotei lived in the T’ang dynasty. He had no desire to call himself a Zen master or to gather many disciples around him. Instead he walked the streets with a big sack into which he would put gifts of candy, fruit, or doughnuts. These he would give to children who gathered around him in play. He established a kindergarten of the streets.

Whenever he met a Zen devotee he would extend his hand and say: “Give me one penny.”

Once as he was about to play-work another Zen master happened along and inquired: “What is the significance of Zen?”

Hotei immediately plopped his sack down on the ground in silent answer.

“Then,” asked the other, “what is the actualization of Zen?”

At once the Happy Chinaman swung the sack over his shoulder and continued on his way.

----!!!!----

Only a person of Zen has the real laughter in his life. Other's are just hiding their restlessness.

हँसो आज इतना कि इस शोर में 

सदा सिसकियों की सुनाई न दे ! 

Means
Laugh so much that in that noise,

No one hears the sound of moaning!

Only a meditator has real laughter in his laugh. Others are restless people!

--Christian Buddha--

A university student while visiting Gasan asked him: “Have you ever read the Christian Bible?”

“No, read it to me,” said Gasan.

The student opened the bible and read from St. Matthew: “And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lillies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. … Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for things of itself.”

Gasan said: “Whoever uttered those words I consider an enlightened man.”

The student continued reading: “Ask and it shall be given to you, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.”

Gasan remarked: “That is excellent. Whoever said that is not far from Buddhahood.”

----!!!!----

Zen is looking at the world with a fresh meditative eye. All the religions teach you to have blind faith over certain books which they call as scriptures. And the book which is considered as scripture by one religion is just an ordinary book for the other religions. A man of Zen doesn't affirms or criticizes all the contents of any book blindly. If something seems right to him, he will say it right. If something from the same book seems to be wrong to him, he will criticize it. A man of Zen is not a slave of any book!

-- The Great Meaning --

Zen master Muzhou asked a monk, "Where do you come from?"

The monk said, "From Liuyang."

Muzhou said, "What does the teacher there say when a student asks him about the great meaning of the Buddhadharma?"

The monk said, "He says,'Traveling everywhere without a path.'"

Muzhou said, "Does that teacher really say that or not?"

The monk said, "He really does say that."

Muzhou took his staff and struck the monk, saying, "This fool just repeats words!"

-- No Wisdom Of True Thusness --

Provincial Governor Li Ao asked Zen master Longtan, "What is the wisdom of true thusness?"
Longtan said, "I have no wisdom of true thusness."
The governor said, "I am fortunate to have met you, Master."
Longtan said, "You still speak outside the essential matter."

----!!!!----
The ultimate truth is not something which you can know. You can live it, but you cannot know it. You have lived life for so long. Can you say you know it? No! You can live your life, but cannot know it. Thinking that you can know it is a kind of ego. You have property in your locker, you have bank balance, now you want that ultimate knowledge also under your belt. This is the holy ego. No! You can only surrender to 'it', you cannot know it. And it is good that it cannot be known. If everything becomes known in the world then there will be so much boredom that people will start committing suicide. This is why Zen Master Longtan says that he doesn't know it.
Secondly, the true homage to any master is that you also meditate and become enlightened. Just paying reverence by words is a way to evade from meditation. This is why I say Buddhist are utterly against Buddha. Jainas are utterly against Mahavira. They pay homage to them but do not meditate and Buddha tried for his whole life to make everyone a Buddha, not his follower. He wanted to liberate everyone but created a new kind of bondage out of him. No! Just paying reverence will not do. Meditate. Zen means meditation.

-- Cover --

One day, Daowu picked up his hat to go out.

His fellow monk Yunyan pointed to the hat and said, "What does this do?"

Daowu said, "It has a use."

Yunyan said, "If you suddenly encountered a violent storm, then what?"

Daowu said, "It would cover me."

Yunyan said, "Does the hat also have a cover?"

Daowu said, "Yes it does, but its cover never leaks."

-- Zen Master Entering Hell --

An official asked Zen Master Joshu, "Will the master go into the hell or not?"

Joshu said, "I entered the hell long ago."

The official said, "Why do you enter hell?"

Joshu said, "If I don't enter the hell, who will teach you?"

----!!!!----

Remember! To keep silent and be meditative is more comfortable for a Buddha. But if he keeps silent you will not start your inner journey, the journey of meditation. So he speaks, even though he knows that the truth cannot be conveyed in words. This is his great compassion on us.
He is himself free from all the sorrow, still he understands our pain. He sees our ignorance and the suffering caused due to it. He feels it and come to help us - to liberate us from our suffering, knowing very well that he cannot do anything. Only we can help ourselves. This is his great compassion on us.
Being a human being, still not realizing our Buddhahood is the failure of that very compassion. 
Meditate. Zen means Meditation!

-- The Strange Lecture --

Zen Master Joshu entered the hall and addressed the monks, saying, "A metal Buddha does not withstand the furnace. A wooden Buddha does not withstand the fire. A mud Buddha does not withstand water. The genuine Buddha sits within you......

".. Try sitting in Zazen for twenty or thirty years, and if you still don't understand then cut off my head!..

"I heard Yaoshan say, 'People ask me to reveal it, but when I teach, it is like something taken from a dog's mouth.' What I teach is like something taken from a dog's mouth. Take what I say as dirty. Don't take what I say as clean. Don't be like a hound always looking for something to eat.

"Where is the Buddhadharma? Thousands of fellows are seeking Buddha, but if you go looking among them for a person of the Way you can't find one. If you're going to be a disciple of Buddha then don't let the mind's disease be so hard to cure.

"This nature existed before the appearance of the world. If the world ends, this will not end. From the time I saw my true self, there hasn't been anyone else. There's just the one in charge. So what is there to be sought elsewhere? At the moment you have this, don't turn your head or shuffle your brains! If you turn your head or shuffle your brains it will be lost!"

-- Don't Wait --

Zen Master Hangzhou Tianlong entered the hall and addressed the monks, saying, "All of you! Don't be waiting for me to come here so that you can come here, or for me to go back so that you can go back. Each of you already possesses the ocean of glorious treasure-nature and is fully endowed with virtuous merit and the pervasive illumination. Each of you partakes of it! Take care!"

-- Liberation --

At the age of fourteen, Tao Hsin, the Fourth Patriarch, came to Seng Tsan, the Third Patriarch, and said "I beg you, Master, to show your compassion, and lead me to Dharma gate (i.e. the way) of liberation." Seng Tsan asked, "Who has bound you?" Tao Hsin replied, "Nobody has bound me!" Seng Tsan said, "If so, why should you seek for liberation?" Tao Hsin was then enlightened.

-- A Pile of Dry Shit --

One day a famous government officer met a highly respected elderly master. Being conceited, he wanted to prove that he was the superior person.

As their conversation drew on, he asked the master, "Old monk, do you know what I think of you and the things you said?"

The master replied, "I don't care what you think of me. You are entitled to have your own opinion."

The officer snorted, "Well, I will tell you what I think anyway. In my eyes, you are just like a pile of dry shit!"

The master simply smiled and stayed quiet.

Seeing that his insult had fallen into deaf ears, he asked curiously, "And what do you think of me?"

The master said, "In my eyes, you are just like the Buddha."

Hearing this remark, the officer left happily and bragged to his wife about the incident.

His wife said to him, "You conceited fool! When a person has a heart like a pile of dry shit, he sees everyone in that light. The elderly master has a heart like that of the Buddha, and that is why in his eyes, everyone, including you, is like the Buddha!"

-- Picnic/Meditation --

In answer to the observation that some people say they do not meditate because they are too busy, the Dalai Lama told the following story:

A monk keeps promising his student that he will take him on a picnic but is always too busy to do so. One day they see a procession carrying a corpse.

"Where is he going?" the monk asks his student.

"On a picnic."

-- Midnight Excursion --

Many pupils were studying meditation under the Zen master Sengai. One of them used to arise at night, climb over the temple wall, and go to town on a pleasure jaunt. Sengai, inspecting the dormitory quarters, found this pupil missing one night and also discovered the high stool he had used to scale the wall. Sengai removed the stool and stood there in its place. When the wanderer returned, not knowing that Sengai was the stool, he put his feet on the master’s head and jumped down into the grounds. Discovering what he had done, he was aghast.

Sengai said: “It is very chilly in the early morning. Do be careful not to catch cold yourself.”

The pupil never went out at night again.

-- Man and His Horse --

There is a story in zen circles about a man and a horse. The horse is galloping quickly, and it appears that the man on the horse is going somewhere important. Another man, standing alongside the road, shouts, “Where are you going?” and the first man replies, “I don’t know! Ask the horse!”
Are we doing the same?

-- The Complete Entrance --

A monk said, “I’ve just arrived at the monastery. I ask the master to reveal to me the complete entrance.” Baofu said, “If I were to show you the complete entrance, then I would just bow to you.”

----!!!!----

There are two types of knowledge: One which can be given to you, the other which cannot. Unless you have already realized what Buddha has experienced, you cannot understand anything about that experience. Hence master Baofu is saying that he cannot explain the truth to him. The day he would himself realize the truth, he can understand it. But if he has realized the truth then he himself became the Buddha. Hence master is saying that he would just bow to the monk!

Zen is all about that which cannot be given to you. You have to meditate and realize yourself. Remember Zen comes from the root Dhyana which means Meditation.

जिन्हें हम कह नहीं सकते, जिन्हें तुम सुन नहीं सकते

वही बातें हैं कहने की, वही बातें हैं सुनने की !!!

Means
Those things which neither I can speak, nor you can hear
Are exactly the things to be talked of and listened to!!!

--Talking about Zen--

A certain Zen Master remarked laconically to a student who had been talking at some length about Zen theory, 'You have too much Zen.'

'But is it not natural for a student of Zen to talk about Zen?’ enquired the puzzled pupil. 'Why do you hate talking about Zen?'

'Because,' replied the master flatly, 'It turns my stomach!'

----!!!!----

Zen is not about talking hi fi philosophies. Zen is all about meditative silence.

ये ख़ामोशी जो अब के गुफ्तगू के बीच ठहरी है

यही एक बात सारी गुफ्तगू में सब से गहरी है

Means

The silence between our talk

Is the deepest talk!

-- The Silent Recitation --

Once when Great Master Jōshū was at Kannon-in Temple, there was an old woman who sent the Great Master an offering of monetary alms along with a request that he recite the whole of the Tripitaka (Buddhist scriptures) for her.

The Master came down from his meditation seat, circled once around it, and then turned to her messenger and said, “I have already finished reciting the Tripitaka for her.”

The messenger, upon his return, reported this to the old woman.

The old woman said, “When I asked him the other day to recite all of the Tripitaka for me, why did the venerable monk read only half the Scriptures?”

--Zuigan Calls His Own Master--

Zen Master Zuigan called out to himself every day: `Master.'

Then he answered himself: ‘Yes, sir.'

And after that he added: ‘Awake! Awake!'

Again he answered: ‘Yes, sir.'

‘And after that,' he continued, `do not be deceived by others.'

‘Yes, sir; yes, sir,' he answered.

Mumon's Comment: 

Old Zuigan sells out and buys himself. He is opening a puppet show. He uses one mask to call `Master' and another that answers the master. Another mask says `Sober up' and another, `Don't be cheated by others.' If anyone clings to any of his masks, he is mistaken, yet if he imitates Zuigan, he will make himself fox-like.

Some Zen students do not realize the true man in a mask
Because they recognize ego-soul.
Ego-sould is the seed of birth and death,
And foolish people call it the true man.

Who is he talking to?? It's easy to approve oneself, but what does it mean??

--Non-Attachment--

Kitano Gempo, abbot of Eihei temple, was ninety-two years old when he passed away in the year 1933. He endeavored his whole life not to be attached to anything. As a wandering mendicant when he was twenty he happened to meet a traveler who smoked tobacco. As they walked together down a mountain road, they stopped under a tree to rest. The traveler offered Kitano a smoke, which he accepted, as he was very hungry at the time.

“How pleasant this smoking is,” he commented. The other gave him an extra pipe and tobacco and they parted.

Kitano felt: “Such pleasant things may disturb meditation. Before this goes too far, I will stop now.” So he threw the smoking outfit away.

When he was twenty-three years old he studied I-King, the profoundest doctrine of the universe. It was winter at the time and he needed some heavy clothes. He wrote his teacher, who lived a hundred miles away, telling him of his need, and gave the letter to a traveler to deliver. Almost the whole winter passed and neither answer nor clothes arrived. So Kitano resorted to the prescience of I-King, which also teaches the art of divination, to determine whether or not his letter had miscarried. He found that this had been the case. A letter afterwards from his teacher made no mention of clothes.

“If I perform such accurate determinative work with I-King, I may neglect my meditation,” felt Kitano. So he gave up this marvelous teaching and never resorted to its powers again.

When he was twenty-eight he studied Chinese calligraphy and poetry. He grew so skillful in these arts that his teacher praised him. Kitano mused: “If I don’t stop now, I’ll be a poet, not a Zen teacher.” So he never wrote another poem.

--Joshu's Zen--

Joshu began the study of Zen when he was sixty years old and continued until he was eighty, when he realized Zen.

He taught from the age of eighty until he was one hundred and twenty.

A student once asked him: “If I haven’t anything in my mind, what shall I do?”

Joshu replied: “Throw it out.”

“But if I haven’t anything, how can I throw it out?” continued the questioner.

“Well,” said Joshu, “then carry it out.”

--Inviting the robe--

Wealthy patrons invited Ikkyu to a banquet. Ikkyu arrived dressed in his beggar’s robes. The host, not recognizing hin, chased him away. Ikkyu went home, changed into his ceremonial robe of purple brocade, and returned. With great respect, he was received into the banquet room. There, he put his robe on the cushion, saying, “I expect you invited the robe since you showed me away a little while ago,” and left.

--The Laughing Buddha--

Anyone walking about Chinatowns in America will observe statues of a stout fellow carrying a linen sack. Chinese merchants call him Happy Chinaman or Laughing Buddha.

This Hotei lived in the T’ang dynasty. He had no desire to call himself a Zen master or to gather many disciples around him. Instead he walked the streets with a big sack into which he would put gifts of candy, fruit, or doughnuts. These he would give to children who gathered around him in play. He established a kindergarten of the streets.

Whenever he met a Zen devotee he would extend his hand and say: “Give me one penny.”

Once as he was about to play-work another Zen master happened along and inquired: “What is the significance of Zen?”

Hotei immediately plopped his sack down on the ground in silent answer.

“Then,” asked the other, “what is the actualization of Zen?”

At once the Happy Chinaman swung the sack over his shoulder and continued on his way.

--Curiosity--

Once there was an old man who lived at the top of a very high and dangerous precipice. Every morning he would sit at the edge of the cliff and view the surrounding mountains and forest. One day, after he set himself down for his usual meditation, he noticed something shiny at the very bottom of the precipice. Now even though it was very far below him, the old man had keen eyes and could just barely make out what it was. It looked like a rather large, black chest with gold trimmings, just sitting there atop a rock. The old man thought to himself, “Where did it come from? What could be inside?”

----END OF THE STORY!!!----

-- The Last Rap --

Tangen had studied with Sengai since childhood. When he was twenty he wanted to leave his teacher and visit others for comparative study, but Sengai would not permit this. Every time Tangen suggested it, Sengai would give him a rap on the head.

Finally Tangen asked an elder brother to coax permission from Sengai. This the brother did and then reported to Tangen: "It is arranged. I have fixed it for you start your pilgrimage at once."

Tangen went to Sengai to thank him for his permission. The master answered by giving him another rap.

When Tangen related this to his elder brother the other said: "What is the matter? Sengai has no business giving permission and then changing his mind. I will tell him so." And off he went to see the teacher.

"I did not cancel my permission," said Sengai. "I just wished to give him one last smack over the head, for when he returns he will be enlightened and I will not be able to reprimand him again."

----!!!!----

This is the beauty of Zen. You leave your master to go to another master and still he expects that you will get enlightened. But your so called religious leaders are very jealous. If you leave one organized religion and join other, they will become angry with you. They will clamor that you are a betrayer. Their unity is more important than your enlightenment! Why this is so? Because unity is politics. The whole basis of all the so called religions are faith. And the more people are there to support their faith, the safer they feel. If people start leaving their organized religions, their self-confidence starts shaking. Your so called religious leaders are not different than political leaders. If thousand people come and shout that Bible is correct then it will become correct. If thousand people come and shout that Koraan is correct, it will become correct. This is their logic. Such a leader is follower of his followers. If all his followers leave him and join other religion, his whole self-confidence will get shaken. He will not understand what is going on. He will commit suicide!
And now people have started to know the dogmas of these so called religions. So now religious leaders say that their religion is not a religion, it is in fact a way of living. But who the hell they are to preach anyone else the way of living. Who gave them right? A person living thousand years ago wrote a book about so called 'way of living' and that corpse book is called as scripture and it shows the 'way of living' to modern people!
No! Zen is staying away from all these dogmas. Meditation is the search of freedom, liberation from the dead past. This is why Zen masters say:
Zen is leaving Buddha behind
and seeking your own way within yourself
and learning from your own experience!

--A Useless Life--

A farmer got so old that he couldn't work the fields anymore. So he would spend the day just sitting on the porch. His son, still working the farm, would look up from time to time and see his father sitting there. "He's of no use any more," the son thought to himself, "he doesn't do anything!" One day the son got so frustrated by this, that he built a wood coffin, dragged it over to the porch, and told his father to get in. Without saying anything, the father climbed inside. After closing the lid, the son dragged the coffin to the edge of the farm where there was a high cliff. As he approached the drop, he heard a light tapping on the lid from inside the coffin. He opened it up. Still lying there peacefully, the father looked up at his son. "I know you are going to throw me over the cliff, but before you do, may I suggest something?" "What is it?" replied the son. "Throw me over the cliff, if you like," said the father, "but save this good wood coffin. Your children might need to use it."