Kōun Yamada

“When we are dreaming we take the mountains, rivers, flowers, trees, roads, houses, and people we see to objectively exist, but when we wake, we realize that they were all products of our minds. In the same way, as long as unenlightened beings remain deep in the dream of delusion, they will only see things in the world as objectively existent, no matter what we might say to them. But once they awaken to their True Self, they realize that the entire universe is the brilliant light of the self.”
― Kōun Yamada, Zen: The Authentic Gate

“To put it simply, awakening is the realization that the content of both subject and object is empty and one, and that this empty-oneness is none other than the constantly changing phenomenal world of form. That is to say, actual existence is in one aspect totally empty, and in another is the phenomenal world of form that ceaselessly appears and disappears in accordance with the law of causation.”
― Kōun Yamada, Zen: The Authentic Gate