Zen

[Lecter]

He who can take no great interest in what is small will take false interest in what is great.

John Ruskin

[Lecter]

The important point of spiritual practice is not to try to escape your life, but to face it—exactly and completely.

Dainin Katagiri

[Lecter]

I do not seek, I find.

Pablo Picasso

[Lecter]

The mind creates the chasm which only the heart can cross.

Stephen Levine

[Lecter]

When you go to Riverside Drive and sit beside the Hudson River, your thoughts come and go like sailing boats. Finally, they go away—the mind becomes blank—and you do not see the sailing boats. Then the blank mind goes away, and you are absolutely not there. But you still see the river and the green trees; you are expanded into the universe; and your heart beats in the rhythm of nature.

Then "Oh!" and you come back.

Sokei-An

[Lecter]

It is our very search for perfection outside of ourselves that causes our suffering.

The Buddha

[Lecter]

A disciple lived for a time with Zen master Kassan. But feeling that the teachings did not suit him, the disciple decided to go on a pilgrimage. But everywhere he went, the disciple only heard praise for how Master Kassan was the best of teachers. Finally the disciple returned, and when he greeted his old master he said, "Why did you not reveal your profound understanding of the dharma?"

The Master smiled, and replied: "When you cooked rice, did I not light the fire? When you served food, did I not hold out my bowl? How have I failed you?"

At this the disciple was enlightened.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

All are nothing but flowers
In a flowering universe.

Soen Nakagawa

[Lecter]

No one knows your thoughts, master,
and night is empty around us, silent.

Tu Fu

[Lecter]

Can we wash each cup or bowl as if we were bathing a newborn baby Buddha?

Thich Nhat Hanh

[Lecter]

The person who, being really on the Way, falls upon hard times in the world, will not, as a consequence, turn to that friend who offers him refuge and comfort and encourages their old self to survive. Rather, he will seek out someone who will faithfully and inexorably help him to risk himself, so that he may endure the difficulty and pass courageously through it. Only to the extent that a person exposes himself over and over again to annihilation, can that which is indestructible be found within them. In this daring lies dignity and the spirit of true awakening.

Karlfried Dürckheim

[Lecter]

Birds chirp, dogs run, mountains are high, valleys low. It's all perfect wisdom! The seasons change, the stars shine in the heavens; it's perfect wisdom. Regardless of whether we realize it or not, we are always in the midst of the Way. Or, more strictly speaking, we are nothing but the Way itself.

Taizan Maezumi

[Lecter]

Being incapable of conjugating the verb to be, we conjugate instead the verb to have. But as the verb to have can lead us nowhere, for nothing lasting can be acquired, we seek indefinitely to have more. Such is the source of our enslavement.

Robert Linssen

[Lecter]

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he must forget all the roses that were ever painted.

Henri Matisse

[Lecter]

It's always just beginning. Everything is always just beginning.

Jakusho Kwong

[Lecter]

A man traveling from New York came to visit a very famous rabbi living in Europe. The man came to the rabbi's house, a large house on a city street, and was led to the rabbi's room, which was in the attic. He discovered the master living in a simple room with a bed, a chair, and a few books, nothing more. Disappointed, the man said as soon as he finished formal greetings, "Rabbi, where are your things?"

The rabbi quickly asked back: "Where are your things?"

"But, Rabbi, I'm only passing through," the visitor said.

"So am I, so am I," the rabbi replied.

Western Mondo

[Lecter]

The sound of the valley stream
is his great tongue,
the colors of the mountains
are his pure body.
In the night,
I have heard eighty-four thousand hymns,
but how to tell it to people
the next day?

Layman So Toba

[Lecter]

The secret of the mountains is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself: the mountains exist simply, which I do not. The mountains have no "meaning," they are meaning; the mountains are. The sun is round. I ring with life, and the mountains ring, and when I can hear it, there is a ringing that we share. I understand all this, not in my mind but in my heart, knowing how meaningless it is to try to capture what cannot be expressed, knowing that mere words will remain when I read it all again, another day.

Peter Matthiessen

[Lecter]

Well-being means to be fully born, to become what one potentially is; it means to have the full capacity for joy and sadness or, to put it still differently, to awake from the half-slumber the average man lives in and to be fully awake.

Erich Fromm

[Lecter]

In the midst of the plain
sings the skylark,
free of all things.

Bashō

[Lecter]

Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how to un-know.

Sir Richard Francis Burton

[Lecter]

Apply yourselves, day after day, year after year, to the study of the "unthinkable."

Soen Nakagawa

[Lecter]

Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.

William Saroyan

[Lecter]

Who is content with nothing possesses all things.

Nicolas Boileau Despréaux

[Lecter]

Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

[Lecter]

A monk asked the master: "How are you when death arrives?"

The master replied: "When served tea, I take tea. When served a meal, I take a meal."

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

An autumn evening;
It is no light thing
To be born a man.

Issa

[Lecter]

I don't necessarily agree with everything I say.

Marshall McLuhan

[Lecter]

I have just three things to teach: simplicity; patience; compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and in thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.

Tao Te Ching

[Lecter]

In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.

Mother Teresa

[Lecter]

Om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.

[Gone, gone, gone beyond, completely exposed, awake, so be it.]

Heart Sutra, Final Mantra

[Lecter]

And as to me, I know nothing else but miracles.

Walt Whitman

[Lecter]

To be enlightened is to be intimate with all things.

Dōgen

[Lecter]

There is no such person as a Buddha. The Absolute is imminent in every man's heart and this treasure of the heart is the only Buddha that exists. Those who seek the Buddha do not find him. This may be qualified into the statement that those who seek the Truth will find the Buddha and finding, comprehend not the Buddha, but the cause which underlies the phenomena of his life and teaching.

Elizabeth Barrington

[Lecter]

Jump into salvation while you are alive. What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death.

Kabir

[Lecter]

A clearly enlightened person falls in the well. How is this so?

Zen Koan

[Lecter]

God whose love and joy are everywhere can't come to visit unless you aren't there.

Angelus Silesius

[Lecter]

The mountain grows darker,
taking the scarlet
from the autumn leaves.

Buson

[Lecter]

Zen is not about nonmovement...Sitting is a centered, strong position in the midst of movement. When you get a top spinning just right, even though it's going very fast, it's so stable that it doesn't even look as if it's moving. If it's slightly off balance, it wobbles. It has to be centered and moving very fast in order to be stable. That's what Zen is all about.

Bernie Glassman

[Lecter]

Even though you know a thousand things, ask the man who knows one.

Turkish Proverb

[Lecter]

My mind is my own church.

Thomas Paine

[Lecter]

Cooking, eating, sleeping, every deed of everyday life is nothing else than the Great Matter. Realize this! So we extend tender care with a worshiping heart even to such beings as beasts and birds—but not only to beasts, not only to birds, but to insects too, ok? Even to grass, to one blade of grass, even to dust, to one speck of dust. Sometimes I bow to the dust...

Soen Nakagawa

[Lecter]

The fundamental delusion of reality is to suppose that I am here and you are out there.

Yasutani

[Lecter]

The true path to liberation is to let go of everything, even the states and fruits of practice themselves, and to open to that which is beyond all identity.

Jack Kornfield

[Lecter]

On a grass leaf, awaiting
the morning sun,
The dew is melting.
Do not stir the field so soon,
wind of autumn!

Dōgen

[Lecter]

Tozan asked Sozan: "Where are you going?"

"To an unchanging place," Sozan said.

"If it's unchanging, how could there be any going?" asked Tozan.

Sozan said: "Going, too, is unchanging."

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

When we are mired in the relative world, never lifting our gaze to the mystery, our life is stunted, incomplete; we are filled with yearning for that paradise that is lost when, as young children, we replace with words and ideas and abstractions—such as merit, such as past, present and future—our direct, spontaneous experience of the thing itself, in the beauty and precision of this present moment.

Peter Matthiessen

[Lecter]

The mountain flows, the river sits.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

Silent and serene, forgetting words, bright clarity appears before you.

Cheng-Chueh

[Lecter]

Like the arrowsmith who turns his arrows straight and true, a wise person makes his character straight and true.

The Buddha

[Lecter]

That which has been successfully defined has been successfully killed.

Christmas Humphreys

[Lecter]

So many Gods and moralities now, so many logics and geometries, so many ways to see the world, so many ideas about running a family....

The Twentieth Century itself is a koan.

Golf in the Kingdom

[Lecter]

When you eat, the meal is yourself.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

In an archery contest, when the stakes are earthenware tiles, a contestant shoots with skill. When the stakes are belt buckles, he becomes hesitant, and if the stakes are pure gold, he becomes nervous and confused. There is no difference as to his skill but, because there is something he prizes, he allows outward considerations to weigh on his mind. All those who consider external things important are stupid within.

Chuang-Tzu

[Lecter]

Above the saddle, no rider.
Below the saddle, no horse.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

Zen does not teach, it points.

D.T. Suzuki

[Lecter]

Year after year
the monkey's mask
reveals the monkey

Bashō

[Lecter]

Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.

John Burroughs

[Lecter]

I do not want to be right in theory but in nature.

Paul Cézanne

[Lecter]

If you never want to see the face of hell, when you come home from work every night, dance with your kitchen towel, and if you're worried about waking up your family, take off your shoes.

Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav

[Lecter]

After a public reading Bernie Glassman gave, a woman in the audience stood up and asked: "What does it take to live in the Now?"

The master answered: "Would anyone who is not living in the Now please stand up?"

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

Not always so.

Shunryu Suzuki, summing up the Buddha's teaching

[Lecter]

Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the Sun!

May Sarton

[Lecter]

It often happens that I awake at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the pope.

Pope John XXIII

[Lecter]

Zazen is not thinking of good, not thinking of bad. It is no conscious endeavor. It is not introspection.

Dōgen

[Lecter]

Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone one question. This question is one that only a very old man asks. My benefactor told me about it once when I was young and my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it. Now I do understand it. I will tell you what it is: "Does this path have a heart?" If it does, the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use.

Don Juan

[Lecter]

Master Lin-chi was washing his feet. Chou-chou came along and asked the fundamental question: "Why did Boddhidharma come from India to China?"

Lin-chi continued washing his feet.

Chou-chou came closer, pretending he had not heard Lin-chi's response.

Lin-chi poured out the dirty water.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

Not knowing how near the truth is, we seek it far away.

Hakuin

[Lecter]

It's not what you think it is. And neither is it otherwise.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

Turning my back on the Buddha,
how cool
the moonlight.

Shiki

[Lecter]

The love of the heart is the candle flame that carries us through the road of darkness.

St. John of the Cross

[Lecter]

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you—Nobody—too?

Emily Dickinson

[Lecter]

The moment between before and after is called Truth.

Katagiri Roshi

[Lecter]

A student of the Korean master Seung Sahn was attending her first retreat. This was in a newly acquired center in Providence, Rhode Island, in a building that had formally been a funeral home. On the third day the student awoke and looked into the mirror and saw herself as a corpse, her skin all blackened and teeth falling out. Deeply disturbed, she hurried to the interview room to tell Seung Sahn her vision.

Hearing the story, the master burst out laughing and said, "Don't worry, you're a corpse already!"

Zen Story

[Lecter]

True knowledge lies in knowing how to live.

Gracián

[Lecter]

The dolls in the window are doing perfect zazen but they are not opening their eyes.

Yasutani

[Lecter]

Don't just do something. Sit there!

Thich Nhat Hanh

[Lecter]

In zazen, the self does the self by the self.

Master Sawaki

[Lecter]

Down the river Ekisui
floats a leek—
the cold!

Buson

[Lecter]

You are never too old to be what you might have been.

George Eliot

[Lecter]

Talk does not cook rice.

Chinese Proverb

[Lecter]

My religion is to live—and die—without regret.

Milarepa

[Lecter]

The least of things with meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without.

Carl Gustav Jung

[Lecter]

Thus we see that the all important thing is not killing or giving life, drinking or not drinking, living in the town or the country, being lucky or unlucky, wining or losing. It is how we win, how we lose, how we live or die, finally, how we choose. We walk, and our religion is shown (even to the dullest and most insensitive person), in how we walk. Living in this world means choosing and the way we choose to walk is infallibly and perfectly expressed in the walk itself.

R.H. Blyth

[Lecter]

I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows.

Henry David Thoreau

[Lecter]

The evening cool,
not knowing the bell
is tolling our life away.

Issa

[Lecter]

Sometimes nothin's a pretty cool hand.

Cool Hand Luke

[Lecter]

A zendo is not a place for bliss and relaxation. It is a furnace room for the combustion of our delusion. What tools do we need to use? Only one. We've all heard it, yet we use it very seldom. It is called "attention."

Charlotte Joko Beck

[Lecter]

You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion.

Meister Eckhart

[Lecter]

Every morning I awaken torn between the desire to save the world and the inclination to savor it.

E.B. White

[Lecter]

A brash young man watched a sage drawing water from the village well. Slowly, hand over hand, the old man pulled up the wooden bucket of water. After some time the young man left and returned with a pulley, and excitedly explained how to use it, and how easy it would be to draw water by cranking the handle. The old man refused: "Were I to use a device like this, my mind would congratulate itself on being so clever, and then I would quit putting my heart into what I was doing....If I don't put my heart and whole body into my work, my work will become joyless. And how, then, do you think the water would taste?"

Zen Story

[Lecter]

Bring me a pearl from the bottom of the sea without getting wet.

Zen Koan

[Lecter]

Human beings understand too much. But what they understand is just opinion. Like a dog barking. American dog say, "Woof, woof." Korean dog say, "Mung, mung." Polish dog say, "How, how." So which dog barking is correct? That is human beings barking, not dogs barking. If dog and you become one hundred percent one, then you know the sound of barking. This is Zen teaching.

Seung Sahn

[Lecter]

When the bird and the book disagree, always believe the bird.

John James Audubon

[Lecter]

There's no point in translating all of the old Chinese texts—not if you're serious about understanding real Zen. The sound of the rain needs no translation.

Morimoto Roshi

[Lecter]

When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.

Alan Watts

[Lecter]

You must be somebody before you can be nobody.

Jack Engler

[Lecter]

Most people think that we live in the actual world while we are alive, and that after we take the last breath we somehow wander into a vague realm of the spirit. It is a great mistake to see two separate realms. Instead, where we live is in fact the spiritual realm, a realm of many billion worlds, which goes beyond three, four, or even infinite dimensions. Then the danger is that we might think this is a realm that is empty and boundless. Watch out! It's all manifested right here at this moment. It is alive and kicking!

Soen Nakagawa

[Lecter]

Grant that I may be given appropriate difficulties and sufferings on this journey so that my heart may be truly awakened and my practice of liberation and universal compassion may be truly fulfilled.

Tibetan Prayer of Making Difficulties into the Path

[Lecter]

I went to the mountain seeking enlightenment
There was no enlightenment on the mountain.
In desolation
I cried out and there came an echo.
I shouted again.
The echo came again.

Soen Nakagawa

[Lecter]

No snowflake falls in an inappropriate place.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

A hole is nothing at all, but you can break your neck in it.

Austin O'Malley

[Lecter]

Zen is a reality even prior to heaven or earth.

Daito Kokushi

[Lecter]

One moment,
ten thousand years.
Ten thousand years,
one moment.

The Buddha

[Lecter]

Going forward is a matter of ordinariness.

Dōgen

[Lecter]

Once Fa-yen was asked, "What is the first principle?"

He answered: "If I should tell you, it would become the second principle."

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

A priest, Pao-ch'e, was fanning himself. A monk said, "Master, the nature of wind is permanent, and there is no place it does not reach. Why, then, must you still fan yourself?"

"Although you understand that the nature of wind is permanent," the Master replied, "you do not understand the meaning of its reaching everywhere."

"Then what is the meaning of its reaching everywhere?" asked the monk.

The Master just fanned himself. The monk bowed.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

Do not recite sutras. Do not make portraits of me. Just bury my body in the back mountains. It is enough that you cover me with earth.

Takuan, final wishes to his students

[Lecter]

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

Alan Watts

[Lecter]

The practice is what you throw yourself into.
Unconditionally.
The practice is the teacher.
Your practice is your teacher.

Maurine Stuart

[Lecter]

There is neither heaven nor earth,
Only snow,
Falling incessantly.

Hashin

[Lecter]

Don't chase after thoughts, and don't push them away. Just let them come in and go out like a swinging door.

Jakuso Kwong

[Lecter]

Life is fleeting.
Gone, gone—
Awake.
Awake each one!
Don't waste this life!

The Evening Gatha

[Lecter]

Those who are awake live in a state of constant amazement.

Jack Kornfield

[Lecter]

Don't go back to sleep.

Jalal Ad-Din Rumi