While working on a sermon the pastor heard a knock at his office door. "Come in," he invited. A sad-looking man in threadbare clothes came in, pulling a large pig on a rope. "Can I talk to you for a minute?" asked the ma... Read more of Church Bulletin Announcements at Free Jokes.ca

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Samurai

Our Conception Of Buddha Is Not Final
Has, then, the divine nature of Universal Spirit been complet...

The Betterment Of Life
Again, people nowadays seem to feel keenly the wound of the ...

The Parable Of A Drunkard
Now the question arises, If all human beings are endowed with...

Where Then Does The Error Lie?
Where, then, does the error lie in the four possible proposit...

Poetical Intuition And Zen
Since Universal Life or Spirit permeates the universe, the po...

Zazen And The Forgetting Of Self
Zazen is a most effectual means of destroying selfishness, th...

The Beatitude Of Zen
We are far from denying, as already shown in the foregoing ch...

The Introduction Of The So-to School Of Zen
[FN#75] This school was started by Tsing-Yuen (Sei-gen)...

The Law Of Balance
Nature governs the world with her law of balance. She puts t...

The Theory Of Buddha-nature Adequately Explains The Ethical States Of Man
This theory of Buddha-nature enables us to get an insight int...

Hinayanism And Its Doctrine
The doctrine of Transience was the first entrance gate of Hin...

Change As Seen By Zen
Zen, like Hinayanism, does not deny the doctrine of Transienc...

The Fifth And The Sixth Patriarchs
Tao Sin transmitted the Law to Hung Jan (Ko-nin), who being e...

Zen And The Regent Generals Of The Ho-jo Period
No wonder, then, that the representatives of the Samurai clas...

Life Consists In Conflict
Life consists in conflict. So long as man remains a social a...

Zen Is Iconoclastic
For the followers of Bodhidharma, however, this conception of...

Personalism Of B P Bowne
B. P. Bowne[FN#204] says: They (phenomena) are not phantoms o...

Man Is Neither Good-natured Nor Bad-natured According To Su Shih
The difficulty may be avoided by a theory given by Su Shih ...

Universal Life Is Universal Spirit
These considerations naturally lead us to see that Universal ...

Life And Change
Transformation and change are the essential features of life;...

Everything Is Living According To Zen

Everything alive has a strong innate tendency to preserve itself, to
assert itself, to push itself forward, and to act on its environment,
consciously or unconsciously. The innate, strong tendency of the
living is an undeveloped, but fundamental, nature of Spirit or Mind.
It shows itself first in inert matter as impenetrability, or
affinity, or mechanical force. Rock has a powerful tendency to
preserve itself. And it is hard to crush it. Diamond has a robust
tendency to assert itself. And it permits nothing to destroy it.
Salt has the same strong tendency, for its particles act and react by
themselves, and never cease till its crystals are formed. Steam,
too, should have the same, because it pushes aside everything in its
way and goes where it will.

In the eye of simple folks of old, mountains, rivers, trees,
serpents, oxen, and eagles were equally full of life; hence the
deification of them. No doubt it is irrational to believe in nymphs,
fairies, elves, and the like, yet still we may say that mountains
stand of their own accord, rivers run as they will, just as we say
that trees and grass turn their leaves towards the sun of their own
accord. Neither is it a mere figure of speech to say that thunder
speaks and hills respond, nor to describe birds as singing and
flowers as smiling, nor to narrate winds as moaning and rain as
weeping, nor to state lovers as looking at the moon, the moon as
looking at them, when we observe spiritual element in activities of
all this. Haeckel says, not without reason: I cannot imagine the
simple chemical and physical forces without attributing the movement
of material particles to conscious sensation. The same author says
again: We may ascribe the feeling of pleasure and pain to all atoms,
and so explain the electric affinity in chemistry.

Next: The Creative Force Of Nature And Humanity
Previous: Life Change And Hope

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