The services in the chapel of a certain western university are from time to time conducted by eminent clergymen of many denominations and from many cities. On one occasion, when one of these visiting divines asked the president how long he... Read more of PREACHING at Free Jokes.ca

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The Eternal Life As Taught By Professor Munsterberg
Some philosophical pessimists undervalue life simply because ...

Decline Of Zen
The blooming prosperity of Zen was over towards the end of th...

Man Is Not Good-natured Nor Bad-natured But Buddha-natured
We have had already occasion to observe that Zen teaches Bud...

Life In The Concrete
Life in the concrete, which we are living, greatly differs fr...

Scripture Is No More Than Waste Paper
[FN#107] Zen is not based on any particular sutra, either of...

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

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

The Great Person And Small Person
For these reasons Zen proposes to call man Buddha-natured or ...

Enlightened Consciousness
In addition to these considerations, which mainly depend on i...

The Method Of Instruction Adopted By Zen Masters
Thus far we have described the doctrine of Zen inculcated by ...

Nature And Her Lesson
Nature offers us nectar and ambrosia every day, and everywher...

The Sermon Of The Inanimate
The Scripture of Zen is written with facts simple and familia...

The Mystery Of Life
Thus far we have pointed out the inevitable conflictions in l...

Buddha Is Unnamable
Give a definite name to Deity, He would be no more than what ...

The Social State Of Japan When Zen Was Established By Ei-sai And Do-gen
Now we have to observe the condition of the country when Zen ...

The Ancient Buddhist Pantheon
The ancient Buddhist pantheon was full of deities or Buddhas,...

How To Worship Buddha
The author of Vimalakirtti-nirdeca-sutra well explains our at...

Three Important Elements Of Zen
To understand how Zen developed during some four hundred year...

There Is No Mortal Who Is Non-moral Or Purely Immoral
The same is the case with the third and the fourth class of p...

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

Life In The Concrete

Life in the concrete, which we are living, greatly differs from life
in the abstract, which exists only in the class-room. It is not
eternal; it is fleeting; it is full of anxieties, pains, struggles,
brutalities, disappointments, and calamities. We love life, however,
-not only for its smoothness, but for its roughness; not only for its
pleasure, but for its pain; not only for its hope, but for its fear;
not only for its flowers, but for its frost and snow. As
Issai[FN#224] (Sato) has aptly put it: Prosperity is like spring, in
which we have green leaves and flowers wherever we go; while
adversity is like winter, in which we have snow and ice. Spring, of
course, pleases us; winter, too, displeases us not. Adversity is
salt to our lives, as it keeps them from corruption, no matter how
bitter to taste it way be. It is the best stimulus to body and mind,
since it brings forth latent energy that may remain dormant but for
it. Most people hunt after pleasure, look for good luck, hunger
after success, and complain of pain, ill-luck, and failure. It does
not occur to them that 'they who make good luck a god are all unlucky
men,' as George Eliot has wisely observed. Pleasure ceases to be
pleasure when we attain to it; another sort of pleasure displays
itself to tempt us. It is a mirage, it beckons to us to lead us
astray. When an overwhelming misfortune looks us in the face, our
latent power is sure to be aroused to grapple with it. Even delicate
girls exert the power of giants at the time of emergency; even
robbers or murderers are found to be kind and generous when we are
thrown into a common disaster. Troubles and difficulties call forth
our divine force, which lies deeper than the ordinary faculties, and
which we never before dreamed we possessed.

[FN#224] A noted scholar (1772-1859) and author, who belonged to the
Wang School of Confucianism. See Gen-shi-roku.

Next: Difficulties Are No Match For The Optimist
Previous: The Eternal Life As Taught By Professor Munsterberg

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