Zen

[Lecter]

Only those concerned with the matter of life and death need enter here.

Inscription on a plaque at the entrance to Eihei-Ji Monastery

[Lecter]

Which do you think is larger, the highest mountain on earth or the pile of bones that represents the lives that you lived over and over in every realm governed by the patterns of your own karma? Greater, my friends, is the pile of bones than the highest mountain on earth.

The Buddha

[Lecter]

The first thing you learn in life is you're a fool. The last thing you learn is you're the same fool. Sometimes I think I understand everything. Then I regain consciousness.

Ray Bradbury

[Lecter]

The smoke is now making the first sky of the year.

Issa

[Lecter]

Just go into the center of the room, and put one chair in the center. Take the one seat in the center of the room, open the doors and windows, and see who comes to visit. You will witness all kinds of scenes and actors, all kinds of temptations and stories, everything imaginable. Your only job is to stay in your seat. You will see it all arise and pass, and out of this, wisdom and understanding will come.

[Lecter]

How do you think of not-thinking? Nonthinking. This is the heart of zazen.

Dōgen

[Lecter]

I embrace emerging experience. I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector.

William Stafford

[Lecter]

One day a student asked Taiga, "What is the most difficult part of painting?"

Taiga answered: "The part of the paper where nothing is painted is the most difficult."

Artist Zen

[Lecter]

Who looks outside, dreams;
who looks inside, awakes.

Carl Gustav Jung

[Lecter]

The hallmark of a realized person is lightness and briskness.

Yamada Roshi

[Lecter]

If you want to understand Zen easily, just be mindless, wherever you are, twenty-four hours a day, until you spontaneously merge with the way. This is what an ancient worthy called "the mind not touching things, the steps not placed anywhere."

Ying-An

[Lecter]

What is the straight within the bent?

Zen Koan

[Lecter]

To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.

Sir Isaac Newton

[Lecter]

Getting bored is not allowed.

Eloise

[Lecter]

I never look at the masses as my responsibility; I look at the individual. I can only love one person at a time—just one, one, one. So you begin. I began—I picked up one person. Maybe if I didn't pick up that one person, I wouldn't have picked up forty-two thousand.... The same thing goes for you, the same thing in your family, the same thing in your church, your community. Just begin—one, one, one.

Mother Teresa

[Lecter]

I saw the whole idea of spiritual renunciation as a kind of joke, trying to make oneself let go of ordinary life and pleasures. In fact, nirvana is so open and joyful, is so much more than any of the small pleasures we grasp after. You don't renounce the world, you gain the world.

A western master

[Lecter]

I have been reading your Descartes. Very interesting. "I think, therefore I am." He forgot to mention the other part. I'm sure he knew, he just forgot: "I don't think, therefore I'm not."

Katagiri Roshi

[Lecter]

Our poetry now is the realization that we possess nothing. Anything therefore is a delight, since we do not possess it, and thus need not fear its loss.

John Cage

[Lecter]

Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself.

Carl Sagan

[Lecter]

No matter how much I contemplate this tea bowl, it is still—a tea bowl! Thus I arrive in San Francisco.

Soen Nakagawa

[Lecter]

From the outset your own nature is pure.

The P'u-sa-chieh

[Lecter]

I don't seek enlightenment, nor am I deluded, I don't worship Buddha, nor am I disrespectful. I don't sit for long periods, nor am I lazy. I don't eat only once a day, nor am I a glutton. I am not contented, nor am I greedy. When the mind does not seek anything, this is called the Way.

Jayata

[Lecter]

If only I may grow: firmer, simpler—quieter, warmer.

Dag Hammarskjöld

[Lecter]

How often have you been willing to look at your face in the mirror, without being embarrassed? How many times have you tried to shield yourself by reading the newspaper, watching television, or just spacing out? That is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: how much have you connected with yourself at all in your whole life?

Chogyam Trungpa

[Lecter]

Living beings are numberless; I vow to serve until all are liberated.
Ignorance and grasping is boundless; I vow to transform and uproot it all.

Vows of the Boddhisattvas

[Lecter]

For forty years I've been selling water.
By the bank of a river. Ho, ho!
My labors have been wholly without merit.

Sogaku Harada

[Lecter]

At first you will think of practice as a limited part of your life. In time you will realize that everything you do is part of your practice.

Baba Ram Dass

[Lecter]

Those who are unawakened grasp their thoughts and feelings, their body, their their perceptions and consciousness, and take them as solid, separate from the rest. Those who are awakened have the same thoughts and feelings, perceptions, body, and consciousness, but they are not grasped, not held, not taken as oneself.

The Buddha

[Lecter]

Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.

Rainer Maria Rilke

[Lecter]

How can I construct my humble hut right here in the midst of Oxford Circus? How can I do that in the confusion of cars and buses? How can I listen to the singing of birds and also the leaping of fish? How can one turn all the showings of the shop window displays into the freshness of green leaves swayed by the morning breeze? How am I to find the naturalness, artlessness, utter self-abandonment of nature in the utmost artificiality of human works? This is the great problem set before us these days.

D.T. Suzuki, addressing a conference of world religions in London, 1936

[Lecter]

Winter having come,
the crows perch
on the scarecrow.

Kikaku

[Lecter]

In Zen meditation we think non-thinking—that is, we think nothing. What this means is that our whole psychological mind ceases to function, and as a result, our whole being becomes united with the essence of mind, which we signify by Mind. You call this essence the God within you, absoluteness, ultimate reason—it doesn't matter. No matter what you call it, to unite with this essence is the very reason we are gathered here to meditate.

Robert Aitken

[Lecter]

A little nonsense
now and then
is cherished by
the wisest men.

Roald Dahl

[Lecter]

Clomp clomp the monk's feet
through ice and dark
drawing sweet water.

Bashō

[Lecter]

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but to so love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

Henry David Thoreau

[Lecter]

People with opinions just go around bothering one another.

The Buddha

[Lecter]

Life is an adventure in forgiveness.

Norman Cousins

[Lecter]

To the right, books; to the left, a tea-cup. In front of me, the fireplace; behind me, the post. There is no greater happiness than this.

Teiga

[Lecter]

What's here right now? Delusion is yesterday's dream—enlightenment, tomorrow's delusion.

Taizan Maezumi

[Lecter]

In the entire ten directions of the Buddha's universe
There is only one way.
When we see clearly, there is no difference in the teachings.
What is there to lose? What is there to gain?
If we gain something, it was there from the beginning.
If we lose anything, it is hidden nearby.

Ryōkan

[Lecter]

A snowy heron in the snow
Winter grass hidden
Hides itself in its own form

Dōgen

[Lecter]

Swallow the stars until you are one with the universe, with all-pervading universal life.


Soen Nakagawa

[Lecter]

We are living in a historical period in which we understand that it is necessary for all of us to be conscious and active in our world. None of us can ignore this call to action. And yet, if we do not practice zazen, whether we call it zazen or whatever we call it and however we do it, we cannot act in any accurate way. There has been plenty of action—too much action. What we need is not more action, we need enlightened action. And this means letting go of action.

Norman Fischer

[Lecter]

Of ten things you would say, leave off nine. Like a fan in winter, like a bell hung in the air, not questioning the wind from all directions—this is a characteristic of people of the Way. Just go by the principle of the teaching, don't care about the person; go by the path and do not congratulate yourself—this is the most important thing to remember.

Kaizen

[Lecter]

There was a beautiful young girl who became pregnant out of wedlock, and told her angry parents that the father was an old and revered Zen master with a reputation for living a pure life. When the angry parents accused the Master, all he said was, "is that so?" After the child was born, the Master brought the baby into his house and raised it as his own. After a year passed, the girl, stricken with remorse, finally recanted and told her parents that the Master was entirely innocent. The embarrassed parents came to fetch the child, apologizing to the Master and begging his forgiveness. All he said was: "is that so?"

Zen Story

[Lecter]

All the way to Heaven is Heaven.

St. Catherine of Siena

[Lecter]

Karma means you don't get away with nothin'.

Ruth Denison

[Lecter]

Somehow—I [Jakuso Kwong] didn't drop it—the teacup, a temple treasure, dropped itself. You know how those things go? You're positive you didn't drop it, but somehow the teacup left the table. And I missed it and it fell on the floor and broke! And I felt so bad. And then Katagiri Roshi went, "Oh ooooooh." And then Suzuki Roshi went "ooooooh, ooooooh, ooooh, ooh, oh." Then my mind started working. I could glue it back together! But Suzuki Roshi came over and we picked up the pieces. And he took the pieces and he stuffed them into the garbage so deep that even my mind couldn't get to them.

"Dropped" Zen

[Lecter]

All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.

James Thurber

[Lecter]

There is neither heaven nor earth,
only snow,
falling incessantly.

Hashin

[Lecter]

What need have I of gold? The whole world is gold for me!

Naropa

[Lecter]

I believe in the essential unity of all that lives. Therefore I believe that if one person gains spiritually the whole world gains, and if one person falls, the world falls to that extent.

Mohandas K. Gandhi

[Lecter]

Life is this simple: We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the Divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable. It is true.

Thomas Merton

[Lecter]

Life is misery, and miraculous beauty. The word "miracle" has been used too often and has lost its value. But we live in miracles. The thrushes in the park, the ducks drifting in the canals, the floating seagulls, but also the car on the highway, the mechanical digger in the polder and the large square apartment blocks. Whoever can take the time and the peace to observe is surprised and feels the void of his own being.

Janwillem Van De Wetering

[Lecter]

Grapes want to turn to wine.

Jalalad-Din-Rumi

[Lecter]

Who can untangle the tangle of this world?

Buddhagosa

[Lecter]

Don't play as if you've swallowed the metronome.

Nadia Boulanger

[Lecter]

I lay on the bowsprit, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight towering over me. I became drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it, and for a moment lost myself—actually lost my life. I was set free...dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm and the high dim-starred sky...I belonged within a unity and joy to life itself.

Eugene O'Neill

[Lecter]

When we are not sure, we are alive.

Graham Greene

[Lecter]

The wonderful thing about Zen practice is that you get to do it whether you like it or not.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

The important thing is to do, and nothing else; be what it may.

Pablo Picasso

[Lecter]

Who whispered, souls
have shapes
So has the wind, I say.
But I don't know.
I only feel things blow.

Stanley Kunitz

[Lecter]

A guru is like a fire. If you get too close you get burned; if you stay too far away, you don't get enough heat.

Tibetan Proverb

[Lecter]

You yourself are time—your body, your mind, the objects around you. Plunge into the river of time and swim, instead of standing on the banks and noting the course of the currents.

Philip Kapleau

[Lecter]

To get this chance [to practice the Dharma] is very difficult. To be born as a human being is very difficult. Among uncountable sperms and eggs...you are here. Wonderful chance. Congratulations!

Soen Nakagawa

[Lecter]

Awakening is not something newly discovered; it has always existed. There is no need to seek or follow the advice of others. Learn to listen to that voice within yourself just here and now. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things. Do not doubt the possibilities because of the simplicity of these teachings. If you can't find the truth right where you are, where else do you think you will find it?

Buddhist Texts

[Lecter]

No one is injured but by himself.

Michel De Montaigne

[Lecter]

Since everything is none other than exactly as it is, one may well just break out in laughter.

Long Chen Pa

[Lecter]

You cannot stay on the summit forever. You have to come down again.... One climbs and one sees; one descends and one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself...by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one no longer sees, one can at least still know.

René Daumal

[Lecter]

When it's over, I want to say:
all my life
I was a bride married
to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking
the world into my arms...

Mary Oliver

[Lecter]

Actually there is no real teaching at all for you to chew on. But not believeing in yourself, you pick up your baggage and go around to other people's houses looking for Zen, looking for Tao, looking for mysteries, looking for awakenings, looking for Buddhas, looking for masters, looking for teachers. You think this is searching for the ultimate and you make this into your religion. But this is like running blindly. The more you run, the farther away you are. You just tire yourself, to what benefit in the end?

Foyan

[Lecter]

The religion before religion.

One definition of Zen

[Lecter]

Every day is a special day, every place is a special place as it is.

Bernie Glassman

[Lecter]

A human being is a part of the whole called by us "the universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection of a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Albert Einstein

[Lecter]

Friend, hope for the truth while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death.
If you don't break your ropes while you are alive, do you think ghosts will do it after?

Kabir

[Lecter]

Let's have a merry journey, and shout about how light is good and dark is not. What we should do is not future ourselves so much. We should now ourselves more. "Now thyself" is more important than "Know thyself." Reason is what tells us to ignore the present and live in the future. So all we do is make plans. We think that somewhere there are going to be green pastures. It's crazy. Heaven is nothing but a grand, monumental instance of the future. Listen, now is good. Now is wonderful.

Mel Brooks

[Lecter]

The crows of the wood
are gazing down
at the rice-seedling field.

Shiki

[Lecter]

A monk asked Chao-chou: "What is zazen?"
Chao-chou replied: "It is non-zazen."
The bewildered monk said: "How can zazen be non-zazen?"
"It's alive!" was Chao-chou's reply.

Zen mondo

[Lecter]

When confusion ceases, tranquility comes; when tranquility comes, wisdom appears; and when wisdom appears, reality is seen.

Buddhist saying

[Lecter]

The cloud is free only to go with the wind.
The rain is free only in falling.

Wendell Berry

[Lecter]

The mind creates the abyss, and the heart crosses it.

Sri Nisargadatta

[Lecter]

In the light of flowers
I travel
Just for the sake of traveling.

Soen Nakagawa

[Lecter]

There are no Zen masters. There is only Zen.

Obaku

[Lecter]

I fell in love with the wings of birds
The light of spring on them!

Chora

[Lecter]

You can only succeed by just sitting, without need to make use of burning incense, prostrations, remembrance of Buddha names, repentance ceremonies, reading scriptures or ritual recitations.

Ju-Ching

[Lecter]

Let go. Don't let up.

Maurine Stuart

[Lecter]

Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.

Stephen Leacock

[Lecter]

Do not arouse disdainful mind when you prepare a broth of wild grasses; do not arouse joyful mind when you prepare a fine cream soup.

Dōgen

[Lecter]

If your ears see and your eyes hear,
Not a doubt you'll cherish.
How naturally the rain drips from the eaves!

Daito

[Lecter]

Only our own searching for happiness prevents us from seeing it. It is like a vivid rainbow which you pursue without ever catching it, or a dog chasing its own tail. Although peace and happiness do not exist as an actual thing or place, they are always available, and accompany you every instant.

Gendun Rinpoche

[Lecter]

Pain in the knees is the taste of zazen.

Yamada Roshi

[Lecter]

What you see with your eyes closed is what counts.

Lame Deer, Lakota Sage

[Lecter]

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest human battle ever and to never stop fighting.

E. E. Cummings

[Lecter]

Light one candle
with another candle;
an evening of spring.

Buson

[Lecter]

If you don't understand the way right before you,
How will you know the path on which you walk?
Patience is not a matter of far or near,
But if you are confused, mountains and rivers block your way.
I respectfully urge you who study the mystery,
Don't pass your days and nights in vain.

The Sandôkai

[Lecter]

At the very least, sitting Zen practice, called zazen, will bring about a strong sense of well-being, as the clutter of ideas and emotions falls away and body and mind return to natural harmony with all creation. Out of this emptiness can come a true insight into the nature of existence, which is no different from one's Buddha nature. To travel this path, one need not be a "Zen Buddhist," which is only another idea to be discarded, like "enlightenment" and like "the Buddha" and like "God."

Peter Matthiessen

[Lecter]

What do you want to get enlightened for? You may not like it.

Shunryu Suzuki

[Lecter]

The Buddha was wandering through India shortly after his enlightenment. Several men encountered him, and sensed something quite extraordinary about the handsome monk.

"Are you a god?" they asked.
"No," he answered.
"Well, are you a deva or an angel?"
"No."
"Some kind of wizard or magician?"
"No," he said again.
Finally, perplexed, the men asked, "Well, what are you?"
"I am awake," he answered.

Buddhist Mondo

[Lecter]

Sneezing,
I lost sight
of the skylark.

Yayu

[Lecter]

Better not to begin. Once you begin, better to finish it.

Buddhist Saying

[Lecter]

For minds obsessed by compulsive thinking and grasping, you simplify your meditation practices to just two words—"let go."

Ajahn Sumedho

[Lecter]

Consciousness is in the first place not a matter of "I think" but of "I can."

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

[Lecter]

In spiritual practice there are only two things: you sit and you sweep the garden. And it doesn't matter how big the garden is.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

True enlightenment and wholeness arise when we are without anxiety about nonperfection.

The Third Patriarch

[Lecter]

Death is our eternal companion. It is always to our left, at an arm's length. It has always been watching you. It always will until the day it taps you.

The thing to do when you're impatient is...to turn to your left and ask advice from your death. An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you, or if you catch a glimpse of it, or if you just catch the feeling that your companion is there watching you.

Carlos Castaneda

[Lecter]

Whatever you think is delusion.

Katagiri Roshi

[Lecter]

This life of one day is a life to rejoice in. Because of this, even though you live for just one day, if you can be awakened to the truth, that one day is vastly superior to an eternal life...If this one day in a lifetime of a hundred years is lost, will you ever get your hands on it again?

Dōgen

[Lecter]

Every man has beneath his feet ground enough to do zazen on.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

Meditate and do and you shall know.

Elizabeth Barrington

[Lecter]

The wisdom of the heart is here, just now, at any moment. It has always been here, and it is never too late to find it. The wholeness and freedom we seek is our own true nature, who we really are. Whenever we start a spiritual practice, read a spiritual book, or contemplate what it means to live well, we have begun the inevitable process of opening to this truth, the truth of life itself.

Jack Kornfield

[Lecter]

A master and his attendant were traveling, and stopped at an inn. The master went to his room to practice zazen, and continue work on the koan, "'What is Buddha?' Chao-chou: 'A cypress tree in the garden.'" Before going to bed, the attendant knocked on his master's door to check in on him. There was no response. The attendant opened the door and peeked in, and beheld a massive tree rooted in the center of the room.

Zen Story

[Lecter]

In my hut this spring,
there is nothing—
there is everything!

Sodo

[Lecter]

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

William Shakespeare

[Lecter]

Know that joy is rarer, more difficult and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.

André Gide

[Lecter]

You live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality but you do not know this. When you understand this, you will see that you are nothing, and being nothing you are everything. That is all.

Kalu Rinpoche

[Lecter]

A monk asked Yun-men: "What does 'sitting correctly and contemplating true reality' really mean?"

Yin-men answered: "A coin lost in the river is found in the river."

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

Illusion and enlightenment? Two sides of a coin.
Universals and particulars? No difference.
All day I read the wordless sutra;
All night not a thought of Zen practice.
An uguisu sings in the willows along the river bank,
Dogs in the village bay at the moon.

Ryōkan

[Lecter]

When no thought arises, is there still any fault? Mount Everest!

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

Baby mice in their nest
Squeak in response
To the young sparrows.

Bashō

[Lecter]

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

Miles Davis

[Lecter]

Wherever you are, you are in the Zendo.

Bernie Glassman

[Lecter]

Never do evil;
Always do good;
Keep your mind pure—
Thus all the Buddhas taught.

The Dhammapada

[Lecter]

Each second is a universe of time.

Henry Miller

[Lecter]

A trout leaps;
clouds are moving
in the bed of the stream.

Onitsura

[Lecter]

When you find your place, practice begins.

Dōgen

[Lecter]

It is important to see that the main point of any spiritual practice is to step out of the bureaucracy of ego. This means stepping out of ego's constant desire for a higher, more spiritual, more transcendental version of knowledge, religion, virtue, judgement, comfort or whatever it is that the particular ego is seeking.

Chogyam Trungpa

[Lecter]

I have to let go of the need to know so much. What we can know is so small—the holiness around is so large. Now I trust in simplicity, simplicity and love.

Hindu Sage

[Lecter]

Today's begging is finished: at the crossroads
I wander by the side of the Buddhist shrine
Talking with some children.
Last year a foolish monk.
This year, no change!

Ryōkan

[Lecter]

When a dog is chasing after you, whistle for him.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Lecter]

The temple bell stops
but the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers.

Bashō

[Lecter]

To find perfect composure in the midst of change is to find nirvana.

Shunryu Suzuki

[Lecter]

Bring yourself back to the point quite gently. And even if you do nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back a thousand times, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.

St. Francis de Sales, On Meditation

[Lecter]

Didn't I tell you it was there?
You could have found it
without any trouble.
The south wind is warm,
the sun shines peacefully.

Jakushitsu

[Lecter]

The absolute and the relative fit like a box and its lid, like the foot before and the foot behind in walking. Within darkness there is light, but do not look for that light. Within light there is darkness, but do not try to understand that darkness.

The Sandôkai

[Lecter]

White plum, one blossom, two blossoms, three blossoms, one thousand blossoms, ten thousand blossoms.

Hata Zenji

[Lecter]

It's amazing, a wonder, that one wakes up in the morning.

Nagarjuna

[Lecter]

Better a handful of quietness
Than both hands full with toil
And much chasing the wind.

Ecclesiastes

[Lecter]

The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is "look under foot." You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.

John Burroughs

[Lecter]

It is the intensity of the longing that does all the work.

Kabir

[Lecter]

I must confess that I don't have the faintest idea what my purpose is or what's going on, and I never have. I became comfortable with that mystery a long time ago—that I would never know how any of these things fit together in any explicit way.

Gary Snyder

[Lecter]

Meditation is not an escape from life...but preparation for really being in life.

Thich Nhat Hanh

[Lecter]

They slept without dreams and woke without worries. Easy come, easy go. They took life as it came, gladly...

Chuang-Tzu, On the True Men and Women of Old

[Lecter]

Do not be afraid of the true dragon!

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

In this way and that I tried to save the old pail
Since the bamboo strip was weakening, about to break
Until at last the bottom fell out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!

Chiyono

[Lecter]

Wonder is the basis of worship.

Francis Bacon

[Lecter]

I want to go soon and live away by the pond, where I shall hear only the wind whispering among the reeds. It will be a success if I shall have left myself behind.

Henry David Thoreau

[Lecter]

The water is clear right through to the bottom,
A fish goes lazily along.
The sky is vast without horizon,
A bird flies far away.

Cheng-Chueh

[Lecter]

Since the house is on fire, let us warm ourselves.

Italian Proverb

[Lecter]

Three wondering monks, Seppo, Ganto and Kinzan, had lost their way while making a pilgrimage through the mountains. Then they spotted a green vegetable leaf floating down the stream, which meant that someone was living up the mountain. But they decided that anyone careless enough to lose one vegetable leaf was not worth meeting. Just then they saw a man with a long-handled hook racing along the stream, looking for his leaf.

"Lettuce" Zen

[Lecter]

To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.

Chinese Proverb

[Lecter]

You can't make a date with enlightenment.

Shunryu Suzuki

[Lecter]

If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.

Jack Kornfield

[Lecter]

Seeing misery in views and opinions, without adopting any, I found inner peace and freedom. One who is free does not hold to views or dispute opinions. For a sage there is no higher, lower, nor equal, no places in which the mind can stick. But those who grasp after views and opinions only wander about the world annoying people.

The Sutta Nipata

[Lecter]

Don't be consistent, but be simply true.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

[Lecter]

Empty, empty!
Happy, happy!

Ajahn Jumnien

[Lecter]

Lark on the moon, singing—
sweet song
of non-attachment.

Bashō

[Lecter]

The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.

Tennessee Williams

[Lecter]

Life is like an earthen pot. Only when it is shattered does it manifest its emptiness.

Vegetable Root Discourse

[Lecter]

For twelve years, Naropa followed the great Indian sage Tilopa. Tilopa would say, " If you fetch me soup from the kitchen, then I might teach you." Naropa would sneak into the kitchen, suffer a terrible beating at the hands of the kitchen staff, but emerge triumphant with the cup of soup. But Tilopa would only say, " I want another cup, go and fetch it."

This kind of incident occurred over and over and over again, until Naropa's sense of yearning for the teachings reached a crescendo. At that moment Tilopa gave Naropa the most profound initiation into the truth—he took off his sandal and slapped Naropa in the face. Suddenly that was it; there was nothing more Naropa needed.

Tibetan Mondo

[Lecter]

The only practice that is worthwhile is to ask: "What is this?" What is this?

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

Year after year, year after year.
And yet I like to fly above the clouds
I am only skin and bones, like an old crane.

Yasutani

[Lecter]

No one can turn you completely upside down and inside out. You must accept yourself as you are, instead of as you would like to be, which means giving up self-deception and wishful thinking.

Chogyam Trungpa

[Lecter]

Fray Luis, who loved to escape to the peace of the countryside, wrote: "Christ dwells in the fields." St. Teresa, busy in the convent kitchen, used to say: "The Lord walks amongst the pots and pans."

"Kitchen" Zen

[Lecter]

As far Buddha Nature is concerned, there is no difference between a sinner and a sage.... One enlightened thought and one is a Buddha, one foolish thought and one is again an ordinary person.

Hui-Neng

[Lecter]

Gaining enlightenment is an accident. Spiritual practice simply makes us accident-prone.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

Zen mind is one of those enigmatic phrases used by Zen teachers to make you notice yourself, to go beyond the words and wonder what your own mind and being are. This is the purpose of all Zen teaching—to make you wonder, and to answer that wondering with the deepest expression of your own nature.

Richard Baker

[Lecter]

You have a saying, "to kill two birds with one stone." But our way is to kill just one bird with one stone."

Suzuki Roshi

[Lecter]

The real world is beyond our thoughts and ideas; we see it through the net of our desires, divided into pleasure and pain, right and wrong, inner and outer. To see the universe as it is, you must step beyond the net. It is not hard to do so, for the net is full of holes.

Sri Nisargadatta

[Lecter]

A beginning student complained to his master that the meditation practice of following the breath was boring. The Zen master unexpectedly grabbed the student and held his head under water for quite a long time while the student struggled to come up. Finally, he let the student go.

"Now how boring is your breath?" he asked.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

And later in sesshin, as my mind cleared, there rose from the great stillness of zazen the irrefutable not-knowing that Hakuin's eye, the onion smell, knee pain, tea taste, pine whisper, bells, the flutter of temple doves dusting in sunlight, were in no way different from myself, all one, all Mu.

Peter Matthiessen

[Lecter]

After the ecstasy, the laundry.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

Waves recede.
Not even the wind ties up
a small abandoned boat.
The moon is a clear mark
of midnight.

Dōgen

[Lecter]

Having no destination, I am never lost.

Ikkyu

[Lecter]

I have always known that
at last I would take this road
But yesterday I did not know
It would be today.

Narihara

[Lecter]

You are the light, You are the refuge, There is no place to take shelter but yourself.

Inscription over the Buddha's ashes

[Lecter]

Religion is not to go to God by forsaking the world but to find Him in it. Our faith is to believe in our essential oneness with Him. "God is in us and we in Him." must be made the most fundamental faith of all regions.

Soen Shaku

[Lecter]

When both body and mind are at peace, all things appear as they are: perfect, complete, lacking nothing.

Dōgen

[Lecter]

Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Lecter]

The morning after the storm
the melons alone
know nothing of it.

Sodo

[Lecter]

From the beginning
you are enlightened.

Soen Nakagawa

[Lecter]

Buddha Shakyamuni is only halfway there.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

The human mind has absolute freedom as its true nature. There are thousands upon thousands of students who have practiced meditation and obtained this realization. Do not doubt the possibilities because of the simplicity of this method.

Dōgen

[Lecter]

No more words. Hear only the voice within.

Jalal Ad-Din Rumi

[Lecter]

I am going my own way
And I meet myself
Which includes everything
I meet.

Dōgen

[Lecter]

My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while its on your plate—that's my philosophy.

Thornton Wilder

[Lecter]

The Master took the high seat in the Hall. He said: "On your lump of red flesh is a true man without rank who is always going in and out of the face of every one of you. Those who have not yet experienced him—look! Look!

Then a monk came forward and asked, "What about the true man without rank?"

The Master got down from his seat and seized the monk. "Speak! Speak!"

The monk faltered.

The Master shoved him aside, saying, "The true man without rank—what a shit-wiping stick is he!"

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

If you do not get it from yourself, where will you go for it?

Alan Watts

[Lecter]

Good friends, how then are meditation and wisdom alike? They are like the lamp and the light it gives forth. If there is a lamp there is light; if there is no lamp there is no light. The lamp is the substance of light; the light is a function of the lamp. Thus, although they have two names, in substance they are not two. Meditation and wisdom are also like this.

The Platform Sutra

[Lecter]

Just simply alive,
both of us, I
and the poppy.

Issa

[Lecter]

To understand God is to listen, listen to Jesus and Muhammed and Buddha; but don't get caught up in the names. Listen beyond them; listen to God's breath.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

No, no, you're not thinking, you're just being logical.

Niels Bohr

[Lecter]

If you pour a cup of tea, you are aware of extending your arm and touching your hand to the teapot, lifting it and pouring the water. Finally the water touches your teacup and fills it, and you stop pouring and put the teapot down precisely, as in the Japanese tea ceremony. You become aware that each precise movement has dignity. We have long forgotten that activities can be simple and precise. Every act of our lives can contain simplicity and precision and thus can have tremendous beauty and dignity.

Chogyam Trungpa

[Lecter]

There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.

Seneca

[Lecter]

Only within our own body, with its heart and mind, can bondage and suffering be found, and only here can we find true liberation.

The Buddha

[Lecter]

If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have even more peace. So whenever you are attached, let go of that and come back to the center. Learn to see all movement of life with balance and openness.

Achaan Chah

[Lecter]

Time is simply God's way of keeping everything from happening all at once.

Anonymous

[Lecter]

All of us are apprenticed to the same teacher—reality. It is as hard to get the children herded into the car pool and down the road to the bus as it is to chant sutras in the Buddha-hall on a cold morning. One is not better than the other; each can be quite boring; and they both have the virtuous quality of repetition. Repetition and its good results make the very activities of our life into the path.

Gary Snyder

[Lecter]

The rain has stopped, the clouds
drifted away,
the weather is clear again.
If your heart is pure, then all things
in your world are pure....
Then the moon and flowers will guide
you along the way.

Ryōkan

[Lecter]

All worldly pursuits have but the one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow: acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings, in destruction; meetings, in separation; births, in death. Knowing this, one should from the very first renounce acquisition and heaping-up, and building and meeting, and...set about realizing the Truth. Lift is short, and the time of death is uncertain. So apply yourselves to meditation.

Milarepa

[Lecter]

An eager Zen student arrived at the temple. He sought out the Master and said, "I want to join your community and attain enlightenment. How long will it take me?"

"Ten years," the Master replied.

"How about if I really work hard, and double my efforts?"

"Then twenty years," the Master said.

"That's no fair! Why did you double it?"

After which the Master said: "In you case, I'm afraid it will be thirty years."

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

When we see into the emptiness or illusory nature of things, of life and death, of sickness and health, of youth and old age, then we're master of all things. We are free to be healthy, we're free to be sick, we're free to grow old.

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold

[Lecter]

You cannot avoid paradise. You can only avoid seeing it.

Charlotte Joko Beck

[Lecter]

What we call "world" is only an opinion. Take away your opinions, then what? What is left? That's the point. Take away your opinion—your condition, situation—then your mind is clear like space. Clear like space means clear like a mirror. A mirror reflects everything: the sky is blue, tree is green, sugar is sweet. Just be one with the truth—that's Zen style. If your mind is clear like space, then you see clearly, hear clearly, smell clearly—everything clear. That is dharma. That is truth.

Seung Sahn

[Lecter]

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as an enlightened person. There is only enlightened activity.

Shunryu Suzuki

[Lecter]

For forty years, a fisherman in China used a straight needle to fish with. Whenever someone asked him why he didn't use a bent hook, the fisherman always replied, "You can catch an ordinary fish with a bent hook, but I will catch a great fish with my straight hook."

Finally, word of this reached the Emperor, who decided to visit this foolish fisherman himself. After the Emperor saw the man fishing with a straight needle, he asked, "What are you fishing for?"

The fisherman said: "I am fishing for you, Emperor!"

Zen Story

[Lecter]

Within this fathom-long body is found all of the teachings, is found suffering, the cause of suffering, and the end of suffering.

The Buddha

[Lecter]

Zen is not safe. Letting go is a big risk. People are scared out of their minds to let go. To really let go of everything. To let go of everything! That's the big one, isn't it?

Maurine Stuart

[Lecter]

The nature of the mind of beings is like a pearl that falls into the water. The water is muddy so the pearl becomes hidden. When the water is pure, the pearl is revealed.

The Nirvana Sutra

[Lecter]

On the tips of ten thousand grasses
each and every dewdrop contains
the light of the moon.
Since the beginning of time,
not a single droplet has been forgotten.
Although this is so,
some may realize it, and some
may not.

Dōgen

[Lecter]

Zen is the ultimate fact of all philosophy. That final, psychic fact takes place when religious consciousness is heightened to extremity. Whether it comes to pass in Buddhists, in Christians, or in philosophers, it is, in the last analysis, incidental to Zen.

D. T. Suzuki

[Lecter]

Once when Yakusan was sitting, Sekito saw him and asked: "What are you doing here?"

Yakusan said: "I'm not doing anything."

Sekito said: "Then you are just sitting idly."

"If I were sitting idly, that would be doing something," Yakusan said.

"You said you are not doing," Sekito said. "What is it that you aren't doing?"

"Event the saints don't know," said Yakusan.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

The world is not to be put in order, the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.

Henry Miller

[Lecter]

Lord, the air smells good today,
straight from the mysteries within
the inner courts of God.
A grace like new clothes thrown across
the garden,
Free medicine for everybody.
The trees in their prayer, the birds
in praise.

Jalal Ad-Din Rumi

[Lecter]

Summer moon—
hands clapping,
I greet dawn.

Bashō

[Lecter]

As flying is the essential thing for a bird to be a bird, to study the self is the essential thing for us human beings to be human.

Shohaku Okumura

[Lecter]

In Zen, you let your frontal lobe rest.

Katagiri Roshi

[Lecter]

A student was walking through a pine forest with a Zen master. "Please," the disciple begged, "tell me about enlightenment."

"See that tree," the master said, pointing, "see how tall it is?"

"Yes," the student said.

Then the master pointed to a different tree. "See how short this tree is?" he asked.

"Yes," said the student.

"That is enlightenment," the master replied.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of the divine.

St. John of the Cross

[Lecter]

The trouble is that you think you have time.

Zen Master

[Lecter]

Things are not what they seem, nor are they otherwise...Deeds exist, but no doer can be found.

Lankavatara Sutra

[Lecter]

The hermit doesn't sleep at night:
in love with the blue of the vacant moon.
The cool of the breeze
that rustles the trees
rustles him too.

Ching An

[Lecter]

If you use your mind to look for a buddha, you won't see the buddha. As long as you look for a buddha somewhere else, you'll never see that your own mind is the buddha. Don't use a buddha to worship a buddha. And don't use your mind to invoke the buddha. Buddhas don't recite sutras. Buddhas don't keep precepts. And buddhas don't break precepts. Buddhas don't keep or break anything. Buddhas don't do good or evil.

To find a buddha, you have to see your own nature. Whoever sees his own nature is a buddha.

Bodhidharma

[Lecter]

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.

Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

[Lecter]

Truth disappears with the telling of it.

Lawrence Durrell

[Lecter]

Sentient beings are immobile
Inanimate objects are stationary
He who trains himself by exercise
To be motionless
Gets no benefit
Other than making himself as still
As an inanimate object.

The Platform Sutra

[Lecter]

The purpose of Zen is the perfection of character.

Yamada Roshi

[Lecter]

Just as the sun dispels darkness, the perfect sage has conquered the false habits of mind. He does not see the mind or thought derived from the mind.

Nagarjuna

[Lecter]

A cook made soup for the monks from a turtle offered by a fisherman. After the soup was ladled out, the roshi hollered for the cook to come out. It turns out the turtle's head, which should have been removed, was floating in the master's bowl. The cook bowed to the master and with one swift move plucked the head out of the soup with chopsticks and ate it. Then he bowed again, the master bowed back, and the cook scurried back to the kitchen.

"Eating The Blame" Zen

[Lecter]

When you are guided by compassion and loving-kindness, you are able to look deeply into the heart of reality and see the truth.

Thich Nhat Hanh

[Lecter]

In prayer, come empty, do nothing.

St. John of the Cross

[Lecter]

Seeing is never from memory. It has no memory. It is looking now. The total organism is involved in seeing. Not thinking about what is said from memory, but listening and looking openly now.

Toni Packer

[Lecter]

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how men would believe and adore!

Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Lecter]

Nowadays there is no one capable of being dumbfounded.

Soen Nakagawa

[Lecter]

Therefore the mind is like the ocean water, the body is like the waves. As there are no waves without water and no water without waves, water and waves are not separate, motion and stillness not different.

Kaizen

[Lecter]

The fire-fly
gives light
to its pursuer.

Oemaru

[Lecter]

Wealth is the number of things one can do without.

Feodor Dostoyevsky

[Lecter]

A sage has no self, but there is nothing that is not himself.

Sekito

[Lecter]

To be awake is to be alive. I have never met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face? We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

Henry David Thoreau

[Lecter]

The greatest sin is to be unconscious.

Carl Gustav Jung

[Lecter]

You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself flows in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you.

Thomas Traherne

[Lecter]

And so, for the first time in my life perhaps I took the lamp, and went down to my inmost self. But as I moved further and further from the conventional certainties, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me...and when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and out of it came—arising I know not whence—the current which I dare to call my life.

Teilhard De Chardin

[Lecter]

I'm sure I'm not Ada, for her hair goes in such long ringlets, and mine doesn't go in ringlets at all; and I'm sure I can't be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh!, she knows such a very little! Besides, she's she and I'm I and—oh dear, how puzzling it all is!

Lewis Carroll

[Lecter]

To fill the hour—that is happiness; to fill the hour and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Lecter]

Master Isan told a monk: "A hundred years from now, I'll be born in front of the temple as a buffalo. Beside the buffalo, the name Monk Isan is written. If you call it a buffalo, it is Monk Isan. And if you call it Monk Isan, it is a buffalo. How do you call it?"

Zen Koan

[Lecter]

An evening shower.
The ants are running down
the bamboos.

Joso

[Lecter]

The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility: Humility is endless.

T.S. Elliot

[Lecter]

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble. We have to learn to live happily in the present moment, to touch the peace and joy that are available now.

Thich Nhat Hanh

[Lecter]

The lotus flower is unstained by mud. The single dew drop, just as it is, manifests the real body of truth.

Ikkyu

[Lecter]

Opening to oneself fully is opening to the world.

Chogyam Trungpa

[Lecter]

An old Hasidic rabbi asked his pupils how to tell when night ended and the morning began, which is the time for certain holy prayers.

"Is it when you see an animal in the distance and know whether it's a sheep or dog?"

"No," the rabbi answered.

"Is it when you can look at a tree and tell whether it's a fig tree or a pear tree?"

"No," the rabbi answered again.

After a few more tries, the pupils said, "Then tell us, what is it?"

"It is when you can look on the face of any man or woman and know that they are your sister or brother. Until then, it is still night."

Hasidic Mondo