Homage to Daido, Roshi

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What is real, what is reality, what is truth, what is life, what is death, who are you?

To imitate the teachers doesn’t impart strength.

To understand the teachings doesn’t do a blessed thing for your life.

But to realize reality transforms your way of perceiving yourself and the universe—and it shows, it’s felt, it functions.

So what is the reality itself?

~ John Daido Loori, Roshi

source – Zen Mountain Monastery website

There is a deeper dimension to nature and the insentient than what we see on the surface – a realm that goes beyond morphology, chemistry, biology, ecology or physics.  Science most often speaks to what things are.  Zen art points to what else things are.  It speaks not only to the object and its effect on the audience, but moves beyond to present the object’s underlying reality – its intrinsic nature.  And when we personally experience this intrinsic nature, we realize that to know objects only through dissecting, cataloging and understanding them, is to miss their full reality.  It is to fall asleep amidst the mystery and to become numb to the wonder of our lives on this great earth.

~ John Daido Loori, Roshi

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source – Catalog notes accompanying Daido Roshi’s exhibition Jinzu

photo:  Floating Rocks copyright John Daido Loori

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For more on Daido Roshi, please visit his pages at *the awakened eye* website:  the zen of creativity and creativity will never make sense

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