Sameness and Difference

Sameness and Difference

Soto Master Keizan: If you are not greatly enlightened once, you will vainly become mere intellectuals and never arrive at the ground of mind. Because of this you are not yet rid of views of Buddha and Dharma, so when will you ever get out of the bondage of self and others?Thus even if you can remember all the sermons spoken by the Buddha over his forty-nine years of teaching, and do not misunderstand a single doctrine of the three and five vehicles of liberation, if you do not greatly awaken once, you cannot be acknowledged as a true Zen adept.
Transmission of Light, Thomas Cleary

Rinzai Zen Master Hakuin: Anyone who would call himself a member of the Zen family must first of all achieve kensho—realization of the Buddha’s Way. If a person who has not achieved kensho says he is a follower of Zen, he is an outrageous fraud. A swindler pure and simple. A more shameless scoundrel than Kumasaka Chohan. (A thief who posed as a priest.)
Wild Ivy, Norman Waddell

Soto Master Dogen: Clearly remember: in the Buddhist patriarchs’ learning of the truth, to awaken the bodhi-mind is inevitably seen as foremost. This is the eternal rule of the Buddhist patriarchs.
Shobogenzo, Hotsu-Bodaishin, Gudo Nishijima & Mike Cross

Rinzai Zen Master Yuanwu: The wondrous path of the enlightened ones is straight and direct. They just pointed directly to the human mind so we would work to see its true nature and achieve enlightenment.Zen Letters, Thomas ClearySoto Master Keizan:So the Zen school does not set up words, but only transmits direct pointing, proceeding by means of seeing the essence of mind and realizing enlightenment.
Transmission of Light, Thomas Cleary