Tag Archives: forgiveness

What Need Forgiveness?

Recently a question was asked about understanding of forgiveness from a Ch’an perspective. An aspiring Ch’an adept would learn soon enough that this is a totally meaningless question. For instance, the Diamond Sutra would ask, “Forgiveness from what and for whom?” From this realization forgiveness is a useless platitude. Even within the Catholic Confessional the priest “absolves” one from sin, but the actual “forgiveness” needs to be done by oneself, to be able to forgive oneself; absolvement implies totally erasing it—as if it was never there to begin with. The forgiveness factor is a personal thing for the apparent person—in this sense it’s a release from guilt and nothing more. So in actuality it’s a “skandhic-thing”. Yet we know that when the skandhas are disbanded there was really no-person in the first place. Hence, what need forgiveness? read more

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O’ Wanderer, Turn-About and Save Thyself

Reciting the four Bodhisattva Vows

(Yampolsky)

“Now that you have already taken refuge in the threefold body of Buddha, I shall expound to you the four great vows. Good friends, recite in unison what I say: ‘I vow to save all sentient beings everywhere. I vow to cut off all the passions everywhere. I vow to study all the Buddhist teachings everywhere. I vow to achieve the unsurpassed Buddha Way.’ (Recite three times.) read more

Posted in The Platform Sutra, Zen | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments