https://web.stanford.edu/group/scbs/sztp3/translations/gongyo_seiten/translations/part_3/fukan_zazengi.html   Universally Recommended
Instructions for Zazen
(Fukan zazengi)
The Way is originally perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent on practice and realization? The true vehicle is self-sufficient. What need is there special effort? Indeed, the whole body is free from dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from this very place; what is the use of traveling around to practice? And yet, if there is a hairsbreadth deviation, it is like the gap between heaven and earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion. Suppose you are confident in your understanding and rich in enlightenment, gaining the wisdom that knows at a glance, attaining the Way and clarifying the mind, arousing an aspiration to reach for the heavens. You are playing in the entranceway, but you are still are short of the vital path of emancipation.

Consider the Buddha: although he was wise at birth, the traces of his six years of upright sittingcan yet be seen. As for Bodhidharma, although he had received the mind-seal, his nine years of facing a wall is celebrated still. If even the ancient sages were like this, how can we today dispense with wholehearted practice?

Therefore, put aside the intellectual practice of investigating words and chasing phrases, and learn to take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will manifest. If you want to realize such, get to work on such right now.

For practicing Zen, a quiet room is suitable. Eat and drink moderately. Put aside all involvements and suspend all affairs. Do not think "good" or "bad." Do not judge true or false. Give up the operations of mind, intellect, and consciousness; stop measuring with thoughts, ideas, and views. Have no designs on becoming a Buddha. How could that be limited to sitting or lying down?

At your sitting place, spread out a thick mat and put a cushion on it. Sit either in the full-lotus or half-lotus position. In the full-lotus position, first place your right foot on your left thigh, then your left foot on your right thigh. In the half-lotus, simply place your left foot on your right thigh. Tie your robes loosely and arrange them neatly. Then place your right hand on your left leg and your left hand on your right palm, thumb-tips lightly touching. Straighten your body and sit upright, leaning neither left nor right, neither forward nor backward. Align your ears with your shoulders and your nose with your navel. Rest the tip of your tongue against the front of the roof of your mouth, with teeth together and lips shut. Always keep your eyes open, and breathe softly through your nose.

Once you have adjusted your posture, take a breath and exhale fully, rock your body right and left, and settle into steady, immovable sitting. Think of not thinking. Not thinking-what kind of thinking is that? Nonthinking. This is the essential art of zazen.

The zazen I speak of is not meditation practice. It is simply the dharma gate of joyful ease, the practice-realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the koan realized; traps and snares can never reach it. If you grasp the point, you are like a dragon gaining the water, like a tiger taking to the mountains. For you must know that the true dharma appears of itself, so that from the start dullness and distraction are struck aside.

When you arise from sitting, move slowly and quietly, calmly and deliberately. Do not rise suddenly or abruptly. In surveying the past, we find that transcendence of both mundane and sacred and dying while either sitting or standing have all depended entirely on the power of zazen.

In addition, triggering awakening with a finger, a banner, a needle, or a mallet, and effecting realization with a whisk, a fist, a staff, or a shout-these cannot be understood by discriminative thinking; much less can they be known through the practice of supernatural power. They must represent conduct beyond seeing and hearing. Are they not a standard prior to knowledge and views?

This being the case, intelligence or lack of it is not an issue; make no distinction between the dull and the sharp-witted. If you concentrate your effort single-mindedly, that in itself is wholeheartedly engaging the way. Practice-realization is naturally undefiled. Going forward is, after all, an everyday affair.

In general, in our world and others, in both India and China, all equally hold the buddha-seal. While each lineage expresses its own style, they are all simply devoted to sitting, totally blocked in resolute stability. Although they say that there are ten thousand distinctions and a thousand variations, they just wholeheartedly engage the way in zazen. Why leave behind the seat in your own home to wander in vain through the dusty realms of other lands? If you make one misstep, you stumble past what is directly in front of you.

You have gained the pivotal opportunity of human form. Do not pass your days and nights in vain. You are taking care of the essential activity of the buddha way. Who would take wasteful delight in the spark from a flintstone? Besides, form and substance are like the dew on the grass, the fortunes of life like a dart of lightning-emptied in an instant, vanished in a flash.

Please, honored followers of Zen, long accustomed to groping for the elephant, do not doubt the true dragon. Devote your energies to the way of direct pointing at the real. Revere the one who has gone beyond learning and is free from effort. Accord with the enlightenment of all the buddhas; succeed to the samadhi of all the ancestors. Continue to live in such a way, and you will be such a person. The treasure store will open of itself, and you may enjoy it freely.

Also see: Dependent Arising and the Emptiness of Emptiness: Why did Nagarjuana start with causation


Very clear, by James Corrigan

http://sciomorphogenesis.mindfully.be/…/trouble-with-agency/

Agency implies an agent. If there is no agent, there can be no agency. Agency, of course, is the action or intervention of a thing, or person, that produces an effect. To say that language can’t capture the truth is even more true when silly things are being stated. So when someone talks about causes and conditions, they are being silly because these are not the same. A cause is that which makes a thing happen. It implies an agent and agency–a veritable proliferation of sillinesses. A condition is that which opens the possibility of something happening. But conditions can never cause anything to happen because they are neither an agent nor have agency. Perhaps this surprises you. But think about all the things you thought were going to happen in your life that didn’t, and all the things that did that you never saw coming! Scientists call this stochastic behavior–it extends all the way down to the quantum level (and perhaps especially there!). It’s the reason why a computer needs a clock, that coordinates all the stochastic behavior of electronic components so that the device can actually accomplish the tasks it has been engineered to allow to happen. Notice I didn’t say “make happen,” because sometimes things don’t. And we’ve probably all experienced that too.

Often, in our attempts to make sense of reality, we fall into old habits of thought that arise from an understanding in our heads that things do things. Exorcising that understanding happens naturally when a certain point is reached, but without the direct experience, silliness abounds.

Parmenides, an Ancient Greek philosopher once wrote a poem about his insights into reality. He didn’t use any pronouns, and few, if any nouns. Smart people, thinking they knew what he meant, supplied a lot of additional wording that made the poem easier to read, but empty of truth. Then, once that was done, they realized that Parmenides hadn’t said the right thing in the right way, so they fixed that up too. When Parmenides said: “the same: to be and wherefore is intuitive awareness” (“ταὐτὸν δ᾽ ἐστὶ νοεῖν τε καὶ οὓνεκέν ἐστι νόημα”), equating the manifesting appearances and selfless knowing, they clarified it, equating “being” with “thinking,” turning it into a kind of “I think, therefore I am!” statement instead. Silliness. Neither the Greek word for “thought, nor for “thinking” appears anywhere in Parmenides’ statement.

So, try to make sense of conditions, not as any kind of interaction between entities, not even in a metaphorical fashion. Instead, think of how a seed grows. The sun doesn’t cause the seed to grow, any more than rain does, or the soil, or all the bacteria, fungi, animals, and other plants do. Yet, for the seed to grow, all of those conditions need to be right, including the condition of the seed being present.

As to what causes the seed to grow, well, just let the idea of causes go. It involves agents and agency, and they are just silly nonsense. Understand that when the right conditions are present, the possibility of genesis is present, but what actually happens is uncaused.

Now divest that scenario of all sense of things inherent in it. Sunlight isn’t a thing, except as a concept. Neither is water, or soil, or all the life present in soil. These are all just ideas, ways to talk about reality in shorthand. Instead, see an amazing, and coherent presencing of selfless naturing. Don’t even hold onto the idea of a nature, as something doing the naturing. It will cause a cognitive dissonance that will tire you out, but the effort lays a groundwork for the direct experience to come. It’s all just more conditioning, and in this case, it’s called mind training, but it could be called mind conditioning as well, because you are not making anything happen, you are only developing the right conditions for certain experiences to happen.

So remember: there is no mind, instead there is just this awesome and beautiful selfless naturing. Or if you prefer, there is just this awesome and beautiful selfless minding. But no nature and no mind anywhere–just the appearance of awesome beauty.

Reflect on that phrase, “awesome beauty.” Another way of expressing it, that I use, is the visceral essence of selfless loving. But you can just call it bliss instead.

"If asked what I am most drawn to (in Tsongkhapa's teachings), I am most drawn to Prasangika's "mere imputation". The quintessence of "mere imputation" is IMO the essence of Buddhism. It is the whole of 2 truths; the whole of 2 folds. How the masters present and how it is being taught is entirely another matter. It is because in non-conceptuality, the whole of the structure of "mere imputation" is totally exerted into an instantaneous appearance that we r unable to see the truth of it. In conceptuality, it is expanded and realized to be in that structure. A structure that awakens us the living truth of emptiness and dependent arising that is difficult to see in dimensionless appearance."
"In ultimate (empty dimensionless appearance), there is no trace of causes and conditions, just a single sphere of suchness. In relative, there is dependent arising. Therefore distinct in relative when expressed conventionally but seamlessly non-dual in ultimate."

"When suchness is expressed relatively, it is dependent arising. Dependent designation in addition to causal dependency is to bring out a deeper aspect when one sees thoroughly that if phenomena is profoundly without essence then it is always only dependent designations."

- Thusness, 2015

Great book.


Review from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Light-Yoga-B-K-Iyengar/dp/0805210318/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1462456769&sr=1-11:

  Update: the follow article is outdated. The updated one can be found at https://tranquilitysecret.com/awareness-is-unlike-a-mirror-1dfab1569ad5

 

by James M. Corrigan

Taken from Awareness Is Unlike A Mirror

The allegory of a mirror is often used to help individuals understand what awareness truly is like. It is said that, like a mirror, awareness reflects all manner of things and yet is never affected by what appears.
Unfortunately, there is a grave problem with this allegory that instills a very false understanding of awareness in those that take this allegory to heart. A mirror reflects what is before it, but it also reverses that image. Perhaps we should focus more on the reversal aspect than we do on the reflectivity in that allegory because describing awareness as being like a mirror conveys a completely opposite understanding of awareness from what is necessarily true.
Awareness is not reflective. That would imply a dualism. Instead of its reflectivity, it is its “unaffectedness” that is being focused on in this allegory; but that is contrary to our actual experience and leads to a proliferation of reified “minds” used as explanatory devices to get around the initial error of holding that awareness is unaffected by what appears “in the mirror.” This whole concept of “mind” is a fundamental error.
Awareness is essentially cognizance, not reflectivity. “Essentially” means that this cognizance is the characteristic of awareness that makes it awareness.
Unlike awareness, a mirror is not cognizant of what is appearing in it. The opposite of “cognizant” would be “ignorant,” “oblivious,” and even “unaffected by” and that latter antonym is exactly what this allegory wants to convey, and is touted for conveying—thus this allegory illustrates the very opposite of awareness’s essential character and confuses all that hear it and try to make sense of what is being said!
Awareness is affected by what it cognizes; unlike a mirror that is “unaffected by” its reflections because it is not cognizant of them, awareness is cognizance in essence.
We are told that awareness is unaffected by what appears in it in a misleading effort to convey an important point about what is more properly called “pure presence” and this leads me to the first proof that awareness is affected by what appears:
Pure presence is directly known once cognizance of the now—the now of pure presence—is recognized. This is called “Breakthrough” and the knowledge it brings is called Rigpa. In Dzogchen—the highest teaching in Buddhism—it is pointed out that once we become aware of the now as nothing other than pure presence we are liberated. What is liberated? The cognizant aspect of our nature—awareness—is liberated from absorption in the appearances. Which appearances? Primarily the self we have an emotional (egoic) attachment to (our thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensations, perceptions).
This shows that awareness is affected by what appears. How is awareness affected? Three ways: by remaining attentive in approval; by turning away in disapproval; and not paying attention either way when neither approval or disapproval arises. These three affective responses guide what can appear next as the natural display.
The second proof that it is affected is more subtle, relying on a clarification of exactly how awareness arises.
Awareness is not something other than the “presencing” (i.e. naturing) of appearances. It is not a thing. It is not part of a thing. It is not an “aspect” of a process.
Fortunately, the very word itself, with its “-ness” suffix, signals that it is a conceptual abstraction of some characteristic of something, and that is completely wrong in structure—a dead-giveaway that confusion reigns. First, there is no entity to have an aspect, and second, because abstracting awareness away, making it a thing-in-itself (which is the linguistic meaning of “-ness”) completely obfuscates that it is not only the essential character of a  process, it is the only character of the process, thus it is the process—not some aspect of it. This is why when awareness is said to be the “ground” of all that arises a subtle erroneous understanding arises because it is confusing “knowing” for the unknowable.
Effectively, abstracting awareness removes the natural process (from itself), confusing us into thinking that something substantive has been uncovered.
In regard to pure presence, awareness is the wakeful activity of presencing, which is pointed out to us—our first pointing out instruction—as the “knowing” of appearances. This very subtle dualism starts the confusion, which snowballs as we go forward.
Pure presence is not something to be known in a positive sense, and is only recognized via this naturing or presencing of appearances now—the evidence of the reality of presence. Why? Because the essence of pure presence is emptiness—which does not entail awareness in the sense that is meant when used in conjunction with the appearances—what after all would there be cognizance of? Thus the “purity” that is pointed to is the “unknowable” ground state, since nothing positive can be said (or known) about it. But which we may suddenly recognize is the now of all appearances. Appearances are ephemeral and are void of any entity; however, they are evidential—evidence that we can recognize when we suddenly notice the “clearing” of the now (of pure presence) that is the venue of appearing.
“Now” is never affected by what appears. Awareness is always affected by what is appearing because this is the very essence of cognizance, and thus the very essence of the process of naturing (or more literally, awareness is the cognizing of appearances now, limiting and guiding the possibility of what can arise “next,” and this is the sum total of the process).
To conflate awareness with pure presence is a mental crutch, conflating ideas with the unknowable. Expressing “facts” about that to which no facts apply. When recognized, the now is known to be pure presence. But pure presence is not a thing—there is no nature entity—so what could be stained by what appears as cognized?
Thus, the problem is that in making awareness some thing, subtly separating it from the naturing of all appearances, we find the need to prove that it is unaffected by what it cognizes. Yet we know that the essence of this naturing is cognizance; cognizance is not the “nature of the naturing of appearances.” Such a construction is mentation gone wild.
In reality there is no entity; nor are there any entities in the appearances that arise, and these—appearances and reality—are not two things, so why do we make awareness into something that must be kept clean? Perhaps it is only a lack of direct recognition that creates the confusion.