On the Nature of Thought

First thoughts have no parents,
but all thoughts bare children.
All the offspring have no souls,
because at first there was no ancestor.
Thoughts arise to describe reality--
but it can't be done.

Thoughts are not trustworthy, and thoughts are also not an enemy.  Thoughts are just thoughts, they come and they go.  They, in and of themselves, have no reality or substance.  All thoughts arise first because we identify ourselves as some person, or some thing.  When we give rise to a single thought, it rises up first from the sense of 'I'.  From 'I' all thinking, conceptualizing, describing, opinions, and evaluations are derived.  Without first having that primary 'I' concept, all thoughts are irrelevant to the individual.  The only importance or significance that we give to thought is the degree to which we identify with what the thoughts are saying, "their stories".  And, actually, the less importance or attachment we give to our thoughts, the less thought runs our lives. When thought is no longer running the life, then one is free from the 'virtual' life, and living in the actuality of things...Reality.

On the other hand, thought is not to be made the enemy, because making thought bad entrenches the thinking even more than identifying with it.  It is only a thought that wants to get rid of another thought.  It is only an identification that sees a particular thought or concept as problematic.  Who you are cannot be determined by a thought, nor can who you are be determined by resisting thought.
It is actually possible to neither identify with thinking nor resist thought- but to simply recognize that thought is thought, it is impermanent, changing and ultimately unreliable.

The Ecstasy of this Moment

Ecstasy is simple, it is when we complicate it by attaching so many expectations and needs on our state that we actually distort the true simple ecstasy that's here now.  Expecting ecstasy is to overlook ecstasy, to wait on it is to postpone its right here right now reality.  Look for nothing to be better, and find that it is better than we could have made it. 
As the 6th Zen patriarch said, The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.
If we don't prefer ecstasy over anything else, we experience the ecstasy of this moment.  Ecstasy can even look like pain.  It can look like sadness. It can look like ecstasy.
Life itself is ecstasy.  Not our notion of ecstasy, that's a fantasy.
One cannot find the ecstasy of the present, one can only be it.  Finding would require that you were separate from it, but to be it is the simplest thing we could ever do.

Green Tea

Awakening is,
my cup of golden green tea
what else?
The Buddha didn't have anything
on my cup of tea--
flower wilts,
green tea strong

Life and Death

Life and death are the same, birth and life are the same.  Birth and death oppose each other, but life opposes nothing.  Life just is, it is all that there is.  It is a great error to think that you were born, or that you'll die.  Just as Life is never born and never dies, so too with you.  The body will die.  The Self that animates it cannot.  The Self and Life are the same. 
The fear of death is based on the assumption that because the body will die, you will die.  If you were aware that you could not die, what fear could touch you?
If we're really serious about discovering the truth of our existence we must look into this matter of life and death.  There is no getting to Nirvana without first holding this great question very dear. 
We must proceed beyond, to stare directly at our unborn essence, and to see that death is an imagination created from a primary imagination: a sense of separate self.
To find this separate self is to clear up the matter of life and death.  To dig down to the root and find out what this self is made of is to look directly at one's true nature. 
In order to live you must first die, and in order to die you must find out what is living.
No birth, no death, no self, no this, no that...only Life.

Reincarnation

As is often the case, words hold within them great truths, but it is our consciousness that must look deeply in order to see what is hidden within the words.  I find this word reincarnation particularly useful to reveal a deeper truth within our experience.  RE:  again  INCARNATION: coming into the flesh
We are all familiar with the traditional definitions of reincarnation...we die, we're reborn over and over until we reach liberation, right?
But that is all theory, very few of us have that direct knowledge.  There is though, a pointing to our actual direct experience right here, right now.  That pointing is to see how we constantly re-identify with our bodies, with our thoughts about our bodies, and the conditions that our bodies live in.  And I'm not just talking about superficial identification, "I strive to be attractive".  I am talking about the constant binding of 'I' with the body.  Our notion of our self is continually tied to the shifting changes of the body. 
In deep sleep, or even during an engaging movie, we temporarily drop the identification with the body, only to reincarnate again by re-identifying the body as 'me'.   We repeat this cycle a nearly infinite number of times until one day we stop and look, "what am I, really?"  If my body changes, and my mind changes, and my conditions change...what is it that does not change? 
To find that out is liberation...
The notion of ourselves as body, as mind, as conditions, is liberated from the bind of 'self'.
The cycle of reincarnation doesn't end in the future, it ends when we finally get interested in finding out what's True.
The Truth  reveals that there is nothing to reincarnate, and that there is only One that itself incarnates as all things... the reincarnation is not yours or mine.
That which believes itself to be in the flesh must find its non-existence to be liberated, and upon liberation realizes Itself to be that which exists infinitely and eternally.