What is this thing that I call, “I”?  What is it really? We think we know who we are—we have stories about ourselves. But what is it really?  We have our own limited human perception of things, and that's good, that helps us somewhat. But it's not the truth.

We create stories and ideas then we beli...

A monk asked a master, "I just became a monk and would like to know how to enter Buddhahood."

The master said, "Do you hear the waterfall?"

"Yes I do" replied the monk.

Master said, "Enter there."

If you go into the realm of metaphysics about life after life after life, you're in the world of supposition. But take everything about our past actions creating a future life and substitute the word “moment” for “life”. Our action in this moment creates our life in the next moment. Bring it down fr...

Great Effort, I think of as the hinge-point of our practice. If we don't have this great effort, then we really don't have a practice. Because unless we bring our practice to the difficult parts of our lives, it's not much of a practice. In fact, what often seems to happen is many people will practi...

"Before thinking" is easy to talk about but difficult to practice. Our desire, anger, and ignorance are so powerful, so encompassing, and solid that we don’t even recognize their impact. Many people who first hear about before thinking find it absurd. Others feel that it is impossible to not attach ...

When we see the impermanence of this world and discover who we truly are, we can realize a truth that goes beyond impermanence. The truth is something every human being can perceive intrinsically and is already clear in every moment. It is acknowledging the difficulties and dissatisfaction in our ow...

We're actually more focused on the question than the answer because answers change. There's no one fixed answer. The point of questions is to open us up to the experience of our lives. So, this moment is the answer. Our practice is to open up to this moment. It's usually our ideas, our opinions, our...

Self Doubt is quite different than Great Doubt. Self Doubt is more like, "I am no good, what am I doing? "I should be able to do this better." It’s centered on “I”. This "I" is a construct. The fundamental concept of suffering is that attachment to "I". With this self-image, this concept and idea of...

So what am I? We think we know, but we really don't. That not-knowing is the doorway into our liberation. When we walk through that doorway of not-knowing, we let go of the concept, we let go of the belief, we let go of the idea. We ask, “What is it?” If we can let go of what we think we know, then ...

Student: What’s wrong with lust?

Zen Master Bon Soeng: It takes you away from your true nature.

Student: Isn’t it a natural feeling?

ZMBS: Is it? How do we know what’s natural? We think we have an idea of naturalness, but we don’t know naturalness. Maybe we’ve been doing it for so long that we th...

So we all have these dreams. We have the dreams of our likes, our dislikes, this story that we weave about ourselves. We carry this story of ourselves, but the story is not true. It’s factually not correct. We embellish, we make it up as we go along and then we protect it. "I am this." "I don’t like...