Bultasa Zen Group

11/25/2025

This truth pierces a conceptual past, conceptual present, and conceptual future. Equanimity and wisdom cannot appear if we are continually commenting both internally and externally on people, events, situations, and conditions. Commenting causes all sorts of emotional responses. This is the crux of

11/22/2025

When you practice Zen earnestly, you’re burning up the karma that binds you to ignorance. In Japanese the word for “earnest” means “to heat up the heart”. If you heat up your heart, this karma, which is like a block of ice in your mind, melts and becomes liquid. And if you keep heating it, it becomes steam, and evaporates into space. Those people who practice come to melt their hindrances. Why do they practice? Because it’s their karma to do so, just as it’s others’ not to. Our discriminating thoughts build up a great thought-mass in our minds, and this is what we mistakenly regard as our real self. In fact, it’s merely a mental construction based on ignorance. The purpose of Zen meditation is to dissolve this thought-mass. What is finally left is the real self. You enter into the world of the selfless. And if you don’t stop there, if you don’t think about this realm or cling to it, you will continue in your practice until you become one with the Absolute. —Zen Master Seung Sahn

10/18/2025

Here is a cup of orange juice. If you have "cup," then you can keep this orange juice here. But if this cup breaks, how can the orange juice remain? You cannot keep the juice there, yah? Suffering is the same as that. Where does suffering abide? If you are attached to the five skandhas of form, feelings, perceptions, impulses, or consciousness, then suffering has a place to stay. But the Heart Sutra shows the view that these five skandhas are empty. Mind is completely empty: where can suffering possibly stay? So this teaching about emptiness is very, very important to attain. When you practice the way of the perfection of wisdom, you attain that all five skandhas are actually empty. Attaining this view saves us from all suffering and distress. Merely understanding these views cannot help you—you must attain something. —Zen Master Seung Sahn

08/28/2025

08/26/2025

Succinct.

07/02/2025

If you look at what we do in formal Zen meditation, for example—besides the fact we sit in a particular way and become still—we essentially don’t try to get rid of any thought or state of mind or any particular feeling. Likewise, we don’t cling to any particular thought or state of mind or any particular feeling. We let everything come and go freely, just perceive, moment by moment. That practice is a cultivation of nongrasping. That nongrasping is the essence of your true being. If you sit with that attitude, if sadness appears, at that moment you’re just sad. If happiness appears, at that moment you’re just happy. If pain appears, at that moment there’s just pain. You could say sadness kills you at that moment, happiness kills you at that moment, pain in your legs kills you at that moment, the sound of the siren from the fire engine down the street kills you at that moment. But that killing is a coming to life. You connect with what is. So there is a difference between being pulled by emotion and having emotion. We are human beings, so we naturally have thoughts, we naturally have emotions, we naturally have sensations, we naturally have a body, we naturally have relationships. They’re all just aspects of our natural being. But if you begin to get stuck in particular ways, then your emotions pull you around by the nose. Then you are caught. —Zen Master Wu Kwang (Photo by Sven Mahr.)

06/21/2025

Zen Master Seung Sahn:

Clear mind is like the full moon in the sky. Sometimes clouds come and cover it, but the moon is always behind them. Clouds go away, then the moon shines brightly. So don’t worry about clear mind: it is always there. When thinking comes, behind it is clear mind. When thinking goes, there is only clear mind. Thinking comes and goes, comes and goes. You must not be attached to the coming or the going.

photo by Nate Carlson

06/19/2025

"Don't be distracted by inner peace." Quote by Zen Master Bon Hae. See more quotes: https://bit.ly/4cNGSi9

06/12/2025

Well, you gotta be little smart, or at least cognizant.

"That's what I always like about Zen..." Quote by Zen Master Dae Kwang. See more quotes: https://bit.ly/3RNcSub