Junaid was going through the market-place of the town with his disciples. And it was his way to take any situation and use it. A man was dragging his cow by a rope, and Junaid said ’Wait’ to the man, and told his disciples ’Surround this man and the cow. I am going to teach you something.’

The man stopped – Junaid was a famous mystic – and he was also interested in what he was going to teach these disciples and how he was going to use him and the cow. And Junaid asked his disciples ’I ask you one thing: who is bound to whom? Is the cow bound to this man or is this man bound to this cow?’ Of course, the disciples said ’The cow is bound to the man. The man is the master, he is holding the rope, the cow has to follow him wherever he goes. He is the master and the cow is the slave.’

And Junaid said ’Now, see.’ He took out his scissors and cut the rope – and the cow escaped.

The man ran after the cow, and Junaid said ’Now look what is happening! Now you see who is the master; the cow is not interested at all in this man – in fact, she is escaping.’ And the man was very angry, he said ’What kind of experiment is this?’ But Junaid said to his disciples ’And this is the case with your mind.

All the nonsense that you are carrying inside is not interested in you. You are interested in it, you are keeping it together somehow – you are becoming mad in keeping it together somehow. But you are interested IN it. The moment you lose interest, the moment you understand the futility of it, it will start disappearing; like the cow it will escape.’

~Sufi Story
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Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand? (隻手声あり、その声を聞け)

💎Zen Kōan💎
~Hakuin Ekaku
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A fellow went to a Zen master and said, “If I work very hard, how soon can I be enlightened?”
The Zen master looked him up and down and said, “Ten years.”
The fellow said, “No, listen, I mean if I really work and use my vast knowledge, how long — ”
The Zen master cut him off. “I’m sorry. I misjudged. Twenty years.”
”Wait!” Said the young man, “You don’t understand! I’m — ”
“Thirty years,” said the Zen master.

~Zen Story
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You have to drop all your defenses, only then is intimacy possible. We are all hiding a thousand and one things, not only from others but from ourselves.

~OSHO
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Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings and Think Without Mind.

~OSHO
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No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place.

~Zen Proverb
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Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.

~Chuang Tzu
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Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

~Rumi
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The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

~Rumi
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Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.

~Rumi
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What you seek is seeking you.

~Rumi
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If there are fish that would swim or birds that would fly only after investigating the entire ocean or sky, they would find neither path nor place.

~Dogen
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