" To the Great One, the strong in His Force, the Waker in the Dawn,
To Fire, as to one who has vision, let our hymn arise. " *

My hymn I sing to Him in mystic fire,
Blazing fierce with golden scarlet flame:
Flickering tongues to heavenly heights aspire
To glorify His formless sacred Name.
All hearts turn to mystic fire, which inspires
Our souls like glowing souls, to be the same.

Our souls like glowing coals, the same,
Leap like lightning jets of orange fire.
Thunderous claps help humble hearts inspire
To surrender dark ego in florid flame;
Be purified in the lustrous Sun of His Name;
To consummation, our quickened souls aspire.

To consummation, our quickened soul aspires
To find that One of fame, ever the same;
To worship and bow down to His most hallowed name,
And sacrifice prim pride in His white-hot fire,
Transforming our burning dross by inner flame:
To an inward turn, our pilgrim soul's inspired.

Inward turning, does our pilgrim soul inspire
To God-heart, making harrowed soul aspire
To wax hot, worshiping by candle flame
To reach that Oneness, evermore the same.
All change is wrought about by mystic fire,
Renouncing arrogance, for Thy holy Name.

Renouncing arrogance for Thy holy Name,
With hymns to mystic fire, our souls aspire.
The spark within fans fierce as fearless fire
To God. The blazing brand abounds to inspire,
And burns to learn His Oneness is the same,
As naked soul immolates in flickering flame.

As naked soul immolates in flickering flame,
We chant and sing loud praises to His holy Name,
`Til crimson dawn awakes, and we become the same.
So pilgrims, let hymns of mystic fire inspire
Us Godward: may our joyful souls aspire
To be chastened, in His crucible of mystic fire!

Our souls inspire, and to Almighty God aspire:
To become One, and be the same as that formless Name,
Born in the sacred flame of His holy mystic fire.

*Hymn to Agni, Rig Veda , Mandala 1, Sukta 127, Vs 10.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivJrxaSYmwI
molyneux is becoming my favorite philosopher

Autobiography of a Yogi
by Paramhansa Yogananda
(The Original 1946 First Edition)

CHAPTER: 39
Therese Neumann, the Catholic Stigmatist
Click to purchase book

"Return to india. I have waited for you patiently for fifteen years. Soon I shall swim out of the body and on to the Shining Abode. Yogananda, come!"

Sri Yukteswar's voice sounded startlingly in my inner ear as I sat in meditation at my Mt. Washington headquarters. Traversing ten thousand miles in the twinkling of an eye, his message penetrated my being like a flash of lightning.

Fifteen years! Yes, I realized, now it is 1935; I have spent fifteen years in spreading my guru's teachings in America. Now he recalls me.

That afternoon I recounted my experience to a visiting disciple. His spiritual development under Kriya Yoga was so remarkable that I often called him "saint," remembering Babaji's prophecy that America too would produce men and women of divine realization through the ancient yogic path.

This disciple and a number of others generously insisted on making a donation for my travels. The financial problem thus solved, I made arrangements to sail, via Europe, for India. Busy weeks of preparations at Mount Washington! In March, 1935 I had the Self-Realization Fellowship chartered under the laws of the State of California as a non-profit corporation. To this educational institution go all public donations as well as the revenue from the sale of my books, magazine, written courses, class tuition, and every other source of income.

"I shall be back," I told my students. "Never shall I forget America."

At a farewell banquet given to me in Los Angeles by loving friends, I looked long at their faces and thought gratefully, "Lord, he who remembers Thee as the Sole Giver will never lack the sweetness of friendship among mortals."

I sailed from New York on June 9, 1935 in the Europa. Two students accompanied me: my secretary, Mr. C. Richard Wright, and an elderly lady from Cincinnati, Miss Ettie Bletch. We enjoyed the days of ocean peace, a welcome contrast to the past hurried weeks. Our period of leisure was short-lived; the speed of modern boats has some regrettable features!

Like any other group of inquisitive tourists, we walked around the huge and ancient city of London. The following day I was invited to address a large meeting in Caxton Hall, at which I was introduced to the London audience by Sir Francis Younghusband. Our party spent a pleasant day as guests of Sir Harry Lauder at his estate in Scotland. We soon crossed the English Channel to the continent, for I wanted to make a special pilgrimage to Bavaria. This would be my only chance, I felt, to visit the great Catholic mystic, Therese Neumann of Konnersreuth.

Years earlier I had read an amazing account of Therese. Information given in the article was as follows:

(1) Therese, born in 1898, had been injured in an accident at the age of twenty; she became blind and paralyzed.

(2) She miraculously regained her sight in 1923 through prayers to St. Teresa, "The Little Flower." Later Therese Neumann's limbs were instantaneously healed.

(3) From 1923 onward, Therese has abstained completely from food and drink, except for the daily swallowing of one small consecrated wafer.

(4) The stigmata, or sacred wounds of Christ, appeared in 1926 on Therese's head, breast, hands, and feet. On Friday of every week thereafter, she has passed through the Passion of Christ, suffering in her own body all his historic agonies.

(5) Knowing ordinarily only the simple German of her village, during her Friday trances Therese utters phrases which scholars have identified as ancient Aramaic. At appropriate times in her vision, she speaks Hebrew or Greek.

(6) By ecclesiastical permission, Therese has several times been under close scientific observation. Dr. Fritz Gerlick, editor of a Protestant German newspaper, went to Konnersreuth to "expose the Catholic fraud," but ended up by reverently writing her biography.

As always, whether in East or West, I was eager to meet a saint. I rejoiced as our little party entered, on July 16th, the quaint village of Konnersreuth. The Bavarian peasants exhibited lively interest in our Ford automobile (brought with us from America) and its assorted group—an American young man, an elderly lady, and an olive-hued Oriental with long hair tucked under his coat collar.

Therese's little cottage, clean and neat, with geraniums blooming by a primitive well, was alas! silently closed. The neighbors, and even the village postman who passed by, could give us no information. Rain began to fall; my companions suggested that we leave.

"No," I said stubbornly, "I will stay here until I find some clue leading to Therese."

Two hours later we were still sitting in our car amidst the dismal rain. "Lord," I sighed complainingly, "why didst Thou lead me here if she has disappeared?"

An English-speaking man halted beside us, politely offering his aid.

"I don't know for certain where Therese is," he said, "but she often visits at the home of Professor Wurz, a seminary master of Eichstatt, eighty miles from here."

The following morning our party motored to the quiet village of Eichstatt, narrowly lined with cobblestoned streets. Dr. Wurz greeted us cordially at his home; "Yes, Therese is here." He sent her word of the visitors. A messenger soon appeared with her reply.

"Though the bishop has asked me to see no one without his permission, I will receive the man of God from India."

Deeply touched at these words, I followed Dr. Wurz upstairs to the sitting room. Therese entered immediately, radiating an aura of peace and joy. She wore a black gown and spotless white head dress. Although her age was thirty-seven at this time, she seemed much younger, possessing indeed a childlike freshness and charm. Healthy, well-formed, rosy-cheeked, and cheerful, this is the saint that does not eat!

Therese greeted me with a very gentle handshaking. We both beamed in silent communion, each knowing the other to be a lover of God.

Dr. Wurz kindly offered to serve as interpreter. As we seated ourselves, I noticed that Therese was glancing at me with naive curiosity; evidently Hindus had been rare in Bavaria.

"Don't you eat anything?" I wanted to hear the answer from her own lips.

"No, except a consecrated rice-flour wafer, once every morning at six o'clock."

"How large is the wafer?"

"It is paper-thin, the size of a small coin." She added, "I take it for sacramental reasons; if it is unconsecrated, I am unable to swallow it."

"Certainly you could not have lived on that, for twelve whole years?"

"I live by God's light." How simple her reply, how Einsteinian!

"I see you realize that energy flows to your body from the ether, sun, and air."

A swift smile broke over her face. "I am so happy to know you understand how I live."

"Your sacred life is a daily demonstration of the truth uttered by Christ: 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.'"

Again she showed joy at my explanation. "It is indeed so. One of the reasons I am here on earth today is to prove that man can live by God's invisible light, and not by food only."

"Can you teach others how to live without food?"

She appeared a trifle shocked. "I cannot do that; God does not wish it."

As my gaze fell on her strong, graceful hands, Therese showed me a little, square, freshly healed wound on each of her palms. On the back of each hand, she pointed out a smaller, crescent-shaped wound, freshly healed. Each wound went straight through the hand. The sight brought to my mind distinct recollection of the large square iron nails with crescent-tipped ends, still used in the Orient, but which I do not recall having seen in the West.

The saint told me something of her weekly trances. "As a helpless onlooker, I observe the whole Passion of Christ." Each week, from Thursday midnight until Friday afternoon at one o'clock, her wounds open and bleed; she loses ten pounds of her ordinary 121-pound weight. Suffering intensely in her sympathetic love, Therese yet looks forward joyously to these weekly visions of her Lord.

I realized at once that her strange life is intended by God to reassure all Christians of the historical authenticity of Jesus' life and crucifixion as recorded in the New Testament, and to dramatically display the ever-living bond between the Galilean Master and his devotees.

Professor Wurz related some of his experiences with the saint.

"Several of us, including Therese, often travel for days on sight-seeing trips throughout Germany," he told me. "It is a striking contrast—while we have three meals a day, Therese eats nothing. She remains as fresh as a rose, untouched by the fatigue which the trips cause us. As we grow hungry and hunt for wayside inns, she laughs merrily."

The professor added some interesting physiological details: "Because Therese takes no food, her stomach has shrunk. She has no excretions, but her perspiration glands function; her skin is always soft and firm."

At the time of parting, I expressed to Therese my desire to be present at her trance.

"Yes, please come to Konnersreuth next Friday," she said graciously. "The bishop will give you a permit. I am very happy you sought me out in Eichstatt."

Therese shook hands gently, many times, and walked with our party to the gate. Mr. Wright turned on the automobile radio; the saint examined it with little enthusiastic chuckles. Such a large crowd of youngsters gathered that Therese retreated into the house. We saw her at a window, where she peered at us, childlike, waving her hand.

From a conversation the next day with two of Therese's brothers, very kind and amiable, we learned that the saint sleeps only one or two hours at night. In spite of the many wounds in her body, she is active and full of energy. She loves birds, looks after an aquarium of fish, and works often in her garden. Her correspondence is large; Catholic devotees write her for prayers and healing blessings. Many seekers have been cured through her of serious diseases.

Her brother Ferdinand, about twenty-three, explained that Therese has the power, through prayer, of working out on her own body the ailments of others. The saint's abstinence from food dates from a time when she prayed that the throat disease of a young man of her parish, then preparing to enter holy orders, be transferred to her own throat.

On Thursday afternoon our party drove to the home of the bishop, who looked at my flowing locks with some surprise. He readily wrote out the necessary permit. There was no fee; the rule made by the Church is simply to protect Therese from the onrush of casual tourists, who in previous years had flocked on Fridays by the thousands.

We arrived Friday morning about nine-thirty in Konnersreuth. I noticed that Therese's little cottage possesses a special glass-roofed section to afford her plenty of light. We were glad to see the doors no longer closed, but wide-open in hospitable cheer. There was a line of about twenty visitors, armed with their permits. Many had come from great distances to view the mystic trance.

Therese had passed my first test at the professor's house by her intuitive knowledge that I wanted to see her for spiritual reasons, and not just to satisfy a passing curiosity.

My second test was connected with the fact that, just before I went upstairs to her room, I put myself into a yogic trance state in order to be one with her in telepathic and televisic rapport. I entered her chamber, filled with visitors; she was lying in a white robe on the bed. With Mr. Wright following closely behind me, I halted just inside the threshold, awestruck at a strange and most frightful spectacle.

Blood flowed thinly and continuously in an inch-wide stream from Therese's lower eyelids. Her gaze was focused upward on the spiritual eye within the central forehead. The cloth wrapped around her head was drenched in blood from the stigmata wounds of the crown of thorns. The white garment was redly splotched over her heart from the wound in her side at the spot where Christ's body, long ages ago, had suffered the final indignity of the soldier's spear-thrust.

Therese's hands were extended in a gesture maternal, pleading; her face wore an expression both tortured and divine. She appeared thinner, changed in many subtle as well as outward ways. Murmuring words in a foreign tongue, she spoke with slightly quivering lips to persons visible before her inner sight.

As I was in attunement with her, I began to see the scenes of her vision. She was watching Jesus as he carried the cross amidst the jeering multitude. Suddenly she lifted her head in consternation: the Lord had fallen under the cruel weight. The vision disappeared. In the exhaustion of fervid pity, Therese sank heavily against her pillow.

At this moment I heard a loud thud behind me. Turning my head for a second, I saw two men carrying out a prostrate body. But because I was coming out of the deep superconscious state, I did not immediately recognize the fallen person. Again I fixed my eyes on Therese's face, deathly pale under the rivulets of blood, but now calm, radiating purity and holiness. I glanced behind me later and saw Mr. Wright standing with his hand against his cheek, from which blood was trickling.

"Dick," I inquired anxiously, "were you the one who fell?"

"Yes, I fainted at the terrifying spectacle."

"Well," I said consolingly, "you are brave to return and look upon the sight again."

Remembering the patiently waiting line of pilgrims, Mr. Wright and I silently bade farewell to Therese and left her sacred presence.

The following day our little group motored south, thankful that we were not dependent on trains, but could stop the Ford wherever we chose throughout the countryside. We enjoyed every minute of a tour through Germany, Holland, France, and the Swiss Alps. In Italy we made a special trip to Assisi to honor the apostle of humility, St. Francis. The European tour ended in Greece, where we viewed the Athenian temples, and saw the prison in which the gentle Socrates had drunk his death potion. One is filled with admiration for the artistry with which the Greeks have everywhere wrought their very fancies in alabaster.

We took ship over the sunny Mediterranean, disembarking at Palestine. Wandering day after day over the Holy Land, I was more than ever convinced of the value of pilgrimage. The spirit of Christ is all-pervasive in Palestine; I walked reverently by his side at Bethlehem, Gethsemane, Calvary, the holy Mount of Olives, and by the River Jordan and the Sea of Galilee.

Our little party visited the Birth Manger, Joseph's carpenter shop, the tomb of Lazarus, the house of Martha and Mary, the hall of the Last Supper. Antiquity unfolded; scene by scene, I saw the divine drama that Christ once played for the ages.

On to Egypt, with its modern Cairo and ancient pyramids. Then a boat down the narrow Red Sea, over the vasty Arabian Sea; lo, India!

Thomas Merton's Prayer:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you and I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.

And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road although I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

thezensite


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Second Buddha : Nagarjuna - Buddhism's Greatest Philosopher
by David Loy
This article first appeared in the Winter 2006 edition of Tricycle : The Buddhist Review
original source

IT HAS BEEN SAID THAT, after the Buddha, the single most important figure in the entire Buddhist tradition was a monk named Acharya Nagarjuna, sometimes called the Second Buddha. As is the case with many religious giants, we know little about the historical Nagarjuna. Scholars usually place him sometime in the late second century C.E., but he may have lived a hundred years before or after that period. According to tradition, Nagarjuna was a scholar-monk at Nalanda University, the great Buddhist center of learning in northeast India. Although we know him through his body of writings, we don’t really know how many “Nagarjunas” there actually were, for it is unlikely that all the works attributed to him were written by the same person. There may well have been three or four monks all writing under the same name.

We do know that Nagarjuna’s writings are the basis for the Madhyamaka, or “Middle Way,” school of Buddhism and that Nagarjuna himself became the most influential figure in the development of Mahayana Buddhism, which had begun to emerge during the first century B.C.E. out of disagreements within the Indian sangha about the path to enlightenment. This is despite the fact that his writings never mention many of the signature Mahayana ideas, such as the bodhisattva ideal or the identity of form and emptiness. This raises the intriguing possibility that this pivotal figure in the rise of Mahayana may not himself have been a Mahayanist.

The most famous by far of all the writings attributed to Nagarjuna—and, not incidentally, the most important philosophical text in the Buddhist tradition—is the Miziamadhyamakakarika (“Root Verses on the Middle Way”). The Karikas, as they are often called, are composed of about four hundred and fifty short stanzas, which were eventually divided into twenty-seven chapters. These chapters address the major philosophical issues of his time—including the nature of causality and conditionality, motion and action, the self, its suffering and bondage, nirvana, and the Buddha—but Nagarjuna’s profound insights have proven to be timeless.

Unfortunately for the general reader, Nagarjuna’s Sanskrit, although not lacking in grace or precision, is impersonal and dense. The Karikas were meant to be memorized rather than read, and they would normally have been supplemented by the oral commentary of a teacher. But even then, Nagarjuna’s philosophy is notoriously difficult to understand (which might help explain why he is more revered than studied).

Some Buddhists might think of such a philosophical investigation as incompatible with their contemplative or devotional practice. But that is like separating meditation from wisdom. Absorption in one’s meditation practice develops calmness and clarity, yet peace of mind by itself is not the goal of the Buddhist spiritual path. Buddhism also emphasizes insight—seeing through the thought-constructions that our minds are usually stuck in—and it is these forms of reified thought that Nagarjuna deconstructs.

Nagarjuna’s philosophical approach was revolutionary, but he probably did not think of himself as a radical, which may be why he did not emphasize the Mahayana connection. His innovations are firmly rooted in the original teachings of the Buddha, who refused to discuss metaphysical questions. The Buddha said that debating such issues as whether the world had a beginning or not or what happens to an enlightened person after death was like being struck by an arrow and refusing to be treated until one knows what wood the arrow was made of, who shot it, and so forth. Instead of offering a speculative explanation of the world, the Buddha’s approach was pragmatic. He compared his dharma to a raft, which should wisely be used to cross the river of life and death. Once having crossed, however, one should not carry it everywhere on one’s back. Nevertheless, in the years after the Buddha’s passing, the compilers of the Abhidharma (“higher teaching”) extracted a metaphysics from his teachings.

We might regard Nagarjuna’s philosophy as linguistic therapy: it uses language to reveal how language deceives us. We assume that the world we experience is the real world, but this is delusion. The world as we normally understand it is a linguistic construct. Clinging to conceptual elaborations (prapancha) causes suffering, for they do not accurately reflect how the world actually is. As it turns out, our common sense view of the world is not commonsense at all, because an unconscious metaphysics is built into the ways we ordinarily use language.

Nagarjuna’s rigorous logic analyzes these ways of thinking and reveals that they are inconsistent and self-contradictory. By his own account, that is all he does. He does not try to replace our deluded ways of thinking with a correct understanding with which we can identify. Instead, the true nature of things (including ourselves) becomes apparent when we let go of our delusions. Our emotional and mental turmoil is replaced by a beatitude or serenity (shiva) that cannot be grasped but can be lived.

Buddhism is “the middle way,” yet that has meant different things at different times. The Buddha discovered a middle way between hedonism and asceticism. He also taught a middle way between eternalism (the self survives death) and annihilationism (the self is destroyed at death), for there is no self and never has been. Nagarjuna elucidated a middle position between being (things exist) and nonbeing (things do not exist). That middle position is shunyata. usually translated as “emptiness.”

Shunyata does not mean nonexistence or a void, nor does it describe some transcendent reality such as brahman or God. Shunyata simply signifies that things have no self-being or “essence” of their own. Everything arises and passes away according to causal conditions. For Nagarjuna, shunyata is a heuristic concept, a shorthand device used to refer to this absence of self-existence. Yet the term is often misunderstood. For some, shunyata means that nothing whatsoever exists in any way. Such nihilism is dangerous, because then it makes no difference what we do or do not do, and there is no point in trying to follow a spiritual path. This misconstrues Nagarjuna’s basic project, which is not to describe the world but to refute the ways in which we (mis)understand the world.

Nagarjuna was scathingly critical toward those who interpret shunyata as nothingness: woe to those who hold it, for it’s like grasping a snake by the wrong end. They confuse two different levels of truth, the conventional (samvriti) and the ultimate (paramartha). The conventional is not ultimately true, but it’s needed in order to point to the ultimate. Shunyata is a conventional truth that helps us realize the ultimate, which cannot be expressed in words. Shunyata is itself empty, but it is useful only for pointing out that nothing has self-existence. Shunyata helps pry us free from our attachment to things. But since shunyata has meaning only in relation to something that is not empty, and since ultimately there are no self-existing things, there is therefore no shunyata, either. As with the Buddha’s raft; we need to let go of shunyata, too. The “ultimate truth” does not refer to some other transcendent reality. As another Madhyamika, Atisha, later expressed it: “If you use reason to examine the conventional world as it appears to us, you can find nothing that is real (that has self-existence). That not-finding is itself the ultimate.”

Nagarjuna addressed the philosophical controversies of his day, but the theoretical positions he criticized were based on ordinary ways in which we humans understand ourselves and our world. Our basic delusion is the taken-for-granted distinction between things and their activities. Deceived by language, we divide up the world into nouns and verbs, subjects and predicates. We understand the world as a collection of separate things, interacting in external space and time, arising and passing away. This delusion includes the way we think about ourselves, of course. We usually distinguish our self from our actions and from the events that happen to us—including illness, old age, and death, the classic examples of suffering that inspired the Buddha’s spiritual quest. Because we think of our own being as separate from events, and from everything else, we anticipate with dread the inevitable fate that awaits our individual selves.

AGAIN AND AGAIN in different ways, the Karikas refute this thought-constructed distinction between objects and processes by analyzing how that very distinction distorts our understanding of causality, motion, perception, time, and so forth. Nagarjuna’s basic approach is almost always the same: The particular distinction being examined is shown to be incomprehensible, because, having been made, the two different terms no longer fit back together. The basic problem, the source of our suffering, is that our commonsense ways of understanding ourselves as separate from but also in the world assume this delusive distinction.

For example, consider the relationship between the self and its ever-changing mental and physical states (one’s thoughts, emotions, bodily feelings, etc.). Is the self the same as those states, or different from them? We say, “I am hungry or angry, or confused,” which implies that “I” am constantly changing. But we also have a sense of an “I” that persists unchanged: the “I” that works is the same “I” that gets a paycheck at the end of the month. In everyday life we constantly fudge this inconsistency. Sometimes we understand ourselves one way, sometimes the other, but understanding ourselves as things that both change and stay the same is really a contradiction. Nagarjuna’s explanation for the inconsistency is that the self is shunya, “empty.” In modem terms, my sense of self is an impermanent, ever-changing construct.

Nagarjuna also applies his method to Buddhist constructs. What about nirvana? It too is a shunya concept. If nirvana is something causally unconditioned, a reality that does not arise or pass away, then there is no way for us to get there. If it is conditioned, then it too will pass away, like every other conditioned thing. Neither alternative provides spiritual salvation. Letting go of the ways of thinking in which we are normally stuck allows us to experience the world as it really is. This, “the end of conceptual elaborations (prapancha),” is how Nagarjuna refers to nirvana.

Nagarjuna never actually claims, as is sometimes thought, that “samsara is nirvana.” Instead, he says that no difference can be found between them. The koti (limit, boundary) of nirvana is the koti of samsara. They are two different ways of experiencing this world. Nirvana is not another realm or dimension but rather the clarity and peace that arise when our mental turmoil ends, because the objects with which we have been identifying are realized to be shunya. Things have no reality of their own that we can cling to, since they arise and pass away according to conditions. Nor can we cling to this truth. The most famous verse in the Karikas (25:24) sums this up magnificently: “Ultimate serenity is the coming-to-rest of all ways of ‘taking’ things, the repose of named things. No truth has been taught by a Buddha for anyone anywhere.”

The methodological thoroughness with which Nagarjuna uses concepts to undermine the thought-constructed ways in which we understand the world has long led critics—Buddhist and non-Buddhist, Eastern and Western—to accuse him of nihilism. Indeed, it is likely that the Yogachara school of Buddhism, which emphasizes the reality of consciousness, arose partly as a response to such nihilistic interpretations. Evidently some later Buddhist thinkers were concerned that Nagarjuna’s exclusively negative approach—using language solely to remove the delusions created by language—needed to be supplemented by more positive descriptions of the Buddhist path and goal. Eventually the Madhyamaka and Yogachara approaches became understood as complementary, providing what is generally accepted as the basic philosophy of Mahayana.

David Loy is Besl Professor of Ethics/Religion at Xavier University and a Zen teacher.

The Zen symbol "supreme" is an enso, a circle of enlightenment. The Shinjinmei, written in the sixth century, refers to the Great Way of Zen as "A circle like vast space, lacking nothing, and nothing in excess," and this statement is often used as an inscription on enso paintings. The earliest reference to a written enso, the first Zen painting, occurs in the Keitokudento-roku, composed in the eighth century:

A monk asked Master Isan for a gatha expressing enlightenment. Isan refused saying, "It is right in front of your face, why should I express it in brush and ink?"
The monk then asked Kyozan, another master, for something concrete. Kyozan drew a circle on a piece of paper, and said, "Thinking about this is and then understanding it is second best; not thinking about it and understanding it is third best." (He did not say what is first best.)

Thereafter Zen circles became a central theme of Zen art. Enso range in shape from perfectly symmetrical to completely lopsided and in brushstroke (sometimes two brushstrokes) from thin and delicate to thick and massive. Most paintings have an accompanying inscription that gives the viewer a "hint" regarding the ultimate meaning of a particular Zen circle. The primary types of enso are: (1) Mirror enso: a simple circle, free of an accompanying inscription, leaving everything to the insight of the viewer. (2) Universe enso: a circle that represents the cosmos (modern physics also postulates curved space). (3) Moon enso: the full moon, clear and bright, silently illuminating all beings without discrimination, symbolizes Buddhist enlightenment. (4) Zero enso: in addition to being curved, time and space are "empty," yet they give birth to the fullness of existence. (5) Wheel enso: everything is subject to change, all life revolves in circles. (6)Sweet cake enso: Zen circles are profound but they are not abstract, and when enlightenment and the acts of daily life-"sipping tea and eating rice cakes"-are one, there is true Buddhism. (7) "What is this?" enso: the most frequently used inscription on Zen circle paintings, this is a pithy way of saying, "Don't let others fill your head with theories about Zen; discover the meaning for yourself!"


http://zenart.shambhala.com/browse-gallery.htm?selectedBrowseKey=2488

"Of all the modern economic theories, the economic system of Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability. (...) The failure of the regime in the former Soviet Union was, for me, not the failure of Marxism but the failure of totalitarianism. For this reason I still think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist." ~dalai lama

"Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water. Enlightenment does not divide you, just as the moon does not break the water. You cannot hinder enlightenment, just as a drop of water does not hinder the moon in the sky. The depth of the drop is the height of the moon. Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop, and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky."

~Dogen Zenji (1200 ~ 1253)