What follows is a small collection of writings from various Masters of the Buddha-Dharma.  These teachings on wisdom and compassion are a valuable guide for anyone walking the Middle Path.

If you want to be free, get to know your real self.  It has no form, no appearance, no root, no basis, no abode, but is lively and buoyant.  It responds with versatile facility, but its function cannot be located.  Therefore when you look for it, you become further from it;  when you seek it, you turn away from it all the more. 

~Linji

Without relying on conventions you cannot disclose the sublime, without intuiting the sublime you cannot experience freedom.                                                                    

~Nagarjuna

Well versed in the Buddha way, I go the non-Way, without abandoning my ordinary person’s affairs.

The conditioned and name-and-form, all are flowers in the sky.

Nameless and formless, I leave birth-and-death.

~Layman P’ang

When mortals are alive, they worry about death.  When they’re full, they worry about hunger.  Theirs is the Great Uncertainty.

But sages don’t consider the past, and they don’t worry about the future.  Nor do they cling to the present.  And from moment to moment they follow the Way.

~Bodhidharma

The Buddha is to be found right in the most simple things in front of you, if you’re willing to look.  And the essence of this is finding the balance which doesn’t hold and which doesn’t push away.

~Ajahn Chah

The awakening nature of the dog, is the official decree, the concrete theme.

But if you meddle with concepts of being and non-being , you lose your life.

~Wu-Men

Whatever joy there is in this world, all comes from desiring others to be happy;

And whatever suffering there is in this world, all comes from desiring myself to be happy.

~Shantideva

Give all profit and gain to others, take all loss and defeat upon yourself.

~Atisha Dipankara

Where does suffering come from?  It is born from physical existence.  Where does physical existence come from?  From karma.  Where does karma come from?  It is born from delusion.  On the basis of delusion, you create karma.  On the basis of karma, physical existence forms.  On the basis of physical existence, you incur suffering.  Just manage to break through delusion, and all of this is empty and still.

You may venture to ask, “What is the method for breaking through delusion?”  Just go to the fundamental meditation point and understand: Who is the one reciting the Buddha’s Name?  Who is the one mindful of Buddha?  Take hold of your doubts over this, take hold and defeat them: then all delusion will be smashed.  Think this over!  Don’t neglect it!

~Chu-Hung

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