Koan #28: A Simple Choice

If one wishes to determine whether he desires heaven or hell, he has but to answer a simple question. What is more important to one’s self: freedom or suffering? For no freedom and no suffering is the state that is heaven, while freedom and suffering is the state that is hell. And truly, the decision is as straightforward as this. Yet as straightforward as it is, there can be no more important one.

Koan #10: Hell, Heaven & Earth

What is Hell but a place where one cries because no one is there that can be wholly consoling, yet where one is indeed left free to cry in any manner that one desires? What is Heaven, by contrast, but a place where one does not cry because there is the One who is wholly and completely consoling, yet where one is indeed not free to cry in manner whatsoever? And what is the Earth but a place where—through one’s repentance, faith and obedience—one must choose whether one’s main wish is to be free to cry or not. Thus, think deeply and choose wisely about one’s wish.