Monday, April 20, 2009

Be Yourself

"Be Yourself" number 23 of 200 from Robert Aitken's book Miniatures of a Zen Master.




I got inspired by a post by Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen fame, to create the above presentation slide. I did this yesterday without knowing what today's miniature was about.

In today's miniature, Aitken Roshi reminds us that the Buddha gave up aesthetic practices which were very hard on his body and mind, then took up sitted meditation or as we Zennists say Zazen. We too can give up being hard on ourselves and apply our energies to Zazen. This is what Aitken Roshi means by following the example of the Buddha. Advice express also by Shunryu Suzuki.

Garr's slide below. Very fun stuff. I'll have to do more of this as it is great practice for the presentations I make at work. Now that I see the slides side by side, I can see now that I could improve my slide by increasing the font size a far bit. Also by decreasing the size of 'Shunryu Suzuki', Garr has emphasized what was said (the important stuff) and yet still gave attribution.






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