Great Effort, I think of as the hinge-point of our practice. If we don't have this great effort, then we really don't have a practice. Because unless we bring our practice to the difficult parts of our lives, it's not much of a practice. In fact, what often seems to happen is many people will...

Your true self is always shining and free.
Human beings make something and enter the ocean of suffering.
Only without thinking can you return to your true self.
The high mountain is always blue, white clouds coming and going.

By Zen Master Seung Sahn

"Before thinking" is easy to talk about but difficult to practice. Our desire, anger, and ignorance are so powerful, so encompassing, and solid that we don’t even recognize their impact. Many people who first hear about before thinking find it absurd. Others feel that it is impossible to...

We're actually more focused on the question than the answer because answers change. There's no one fixed answer. The point of questions is to open us up to the experience of our lives. So, this moment is the answer. Our practice is to open up to this moment. It's usually our ideas, our opinions,...

The First Noble Truth is "All things are suffering." Life is suffering. The word in Sanskrit is duḥkha. Sometimes it is translated as "unsatisfactory". Situations, this world, and our lives are not what we want them to be. There's almost always a gap between what we want and what is. In as much...

Self Doubt is quite different than Great Doubt. Self Doubt is more like, "I am no good, what am I doing? "I should be able to do this better." It’s centered on “I”. This "I" is a construct. The fundamental concept of suffering is that attachment to "I". With this self-image,...

So what am I? We think we know, but we really don't. That not-knowing is the doorway into our liberation. When we walk through that doorway of not-knowing, we let go of the concept, we let go of the belief, we let go of the idea. We ask, “What is it?” If we can let go of what we think...

Student: What’s wrong with lust?

Zen Master Bon Soeng: It takes you away from your true nature.

Student: Isn’t it a natural feeling?

ZMBS: Is it? How do we know what’s natural? We think we have an idea of naturalness, but we don’t know naturalness. Maybe we’ve been...

So we all have these dreams. We have the dreams of our likes, our dislikes, this story that we weave about ourselves. We carry this story of ourselves, but the story is not true. It’s factually not correct. We embellish, we make it up as we go along and then we protect it. "I am this." "I...