Dharma Talk: Learning How to Ask by Geoffrey Shugen Arnold Sensei

Dharma Talk: Learning How to Ask by Geoffrey Shugen Arnold Sensei:

"I was looking for the net, but there wasn't one. I was looking for assurances or guarantees. I didn't have to move in; I didn't have to become a monastic. I could go along as I had been, and it would be okay. But "okay" wasn't good enough. I refused to believe that what I knew of life was all there was. And I also realized that if I chose the safe route—not to devote myself to the monastic life—then for the rest of my life there would be one question in my mind that I would carry to my grave: What if I had taken that leap? What would my life have become? I knew I couldn't live with that. I could live with my dreams and aspirations falling apart. But I couldn't live with "What if I had leapt?" That burden was just too great to bear."

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Dharma Discourse: Where Is the Barrier by Geoffrey Shugen Arnold Sensei

Dharma Discourse: Where Is the Barrier by Geoffrey Shugen Arnold Sensei: 

"..... Yuanwu says, "Since people of these times do not understand, they frantically search outside themselves." He's speaking from more than a thousand years ago, and so we see that in this regard, not much has changed. In fact, I wonder if the frantic pace of our searching beyond ourselves hasn't, in fact, become much greater. We're so inundated with images from movies and advertising that show us a happiness, a love, a life that appears to be so much more than our own. Everywhere we turn—television, radio, the internet— we encounter pundits, experts and other confident people who seem to know so much and express their great certainty about all kinds of things."

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