How Can You Say That

Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink. - Shunryu Suzuki

"You people are just like drunkards. I don’t know how you manage to keep on your feet in such a sodden condition. Why everyone will die laughing at you. It all seems so easy, so why do we have to live to see a day like this? Can’t you understand that in the whole Empire of the T’ang there are no ‘teachers of Zen’?”
A monk stepped forth and asked, “How can you say that? At this very moment, as all can see, we are sitting face to face with one who has appeared in the world to be a teacher of monks and a leader of men!”
Please note that I did not say there is no Zen. I merely pointed out that there are no teachers!"

"Those who hasten towards it [the Void] dare not enter, fearing to hurtle down through the void with nothing to cling to or to stay their fall. So they look to the brink and retreat."

He taught that ‘no activity’ was the gateway of his Dharma but that

"All who reach this gate fear to enter.”  To overcome this fear, one] must enter it with the suddenness of a knife-thrust."

"... When you come to a most decided understanding to the effect that all things in their nature are without possessions, without attainments, without dependence, without an abiding place, without mutual conditioning, you will become free from cherishing imagination, which is to realize Bodhi. When Bodhi is realized, your own Mind which is Buddha is realized. All the doings of long ages are then found to have been anything but real disciplining. When the strong man recovered his own gem in his own forehead the recovery had nothing to do with all his efforts wasted in his outside research. So says the Buddha, "I have not had anything attained in my attainment of Enlightenment." Being anxious about our not believing this, he refers to the five eyes and the five statements. But it is truth, not falsehood, for it is the first true statement."

-- Huangbo Xiyun