At times, Zen does get into some Buddhist Cosmology. Nishijima Roshi, my main teacher would talk about that and almost every time immediately say that it was only one way of looking at it. Whenever addressing realms of Heaven or Hell, he'd also address that it was just a psychological state.

The truth comes when you can see that your self-image is just a convenient reference point and nothing more, and that you as you had imagined yourself do not exist.

The problem is the way we let our desires stand in the way of our enjoyment of what we already have.

Morality is a personal matter.

Truly compassionate action arises spontaneously without thought and is carried out in real action with no anticipation of reward and, indeed, no concept of a doer of that action.

I thought that deserved a book and feel like the door needs to be open so people can say, "Ok, here we go, let's deal with this" because we're not dealing with it. I'm waiting for somebody to write another book but it hasn't happened yet, though I guess mine's only been out for a year and a half.

Since then, my approach to all things spiritual is rather cynical you could say. When somebody present something to me as spiritual, my first instinct is to be cynical and think, "oh yeah, one of those again." You see so much of it see in "spiritual culture" and people get very excited about it. It's all very "hoo haw."