Zen 2006 & 2007

[Lecter]

Walking is Zen, sitting is Zen;
whether we speak or are silent,
move or are still,
it is unperturbed.

Yung-Chia

[Lecter]

A disciple asked Chao-chou: “All things return to the One. Where does the One return to?”

Chao-chou’s famous reply: “When I was in Tsing-chou, I had a robe that weighed seven chin.”

Zen Koan

[Lecter]

The establishment of inner harmony is to be attained neither in the past nor in the future, but where the past and future meet, which is the now. When you have attained that point, neither future nor past, neither birth nor death, neither time nor space exist. It is that NOW which is liberation, which is perfect harmony, to which the men of the past and the men of the future must come.

R. H. Blyth

[Lecter]

Shadow owes its birth to light.

John Gay

[Lecter]

A monk asked Ching-t’sen: “What is meant by ‘one’s everyday thought is the Tao’?”

Ching-t’sen said: “When I feel sleepy, I sleep; when I want to sit, I sit.”

“I don’t understand,” said the monk.

Ching-t’sen took pity on him and expounded the lesson: “In summer we seek a cool place, in winter we sit by the fire.”

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

To be satisfied with a little, is the greatest wisdom; and he that increaseth his riches, increaseth his cares; but a contented mind is a hidden treasure, and trouble findeth it not.

Akhenaton

[Lecter]

Zen is like a spring coming out of a mountain. It doesn’t flow in order to quench the thirst of a traveler, but if the travelers want to help themselves to it, that’s fine. It’s up to you what you do with the water; the spring’s job is just to flow.

Alan Watts

[Lecter]

Scripture says, “No one knows the Father but by the Son.” Therefore, if you want to know God, you must not only be like the Son, you must be the Son.

Meister Eckhart

[Lecter]

The student says, “Master, please hand me the knife,” and so the master hands it to him blade first.

“Please give me the other end,” the student says.

“And what would you do with the other end?” replies the master.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

And do not change. Do not divert your love from visible things. But go on loving what is good, simple and ordinary; animals and things and flowers, and keep the balance true.

Rainer Maria Rilke

[Lecter]

Old gnarled trees darken the trail:

Where is the temple bell?

Li Po

[Lecter]

A military man brought a pressing problem to Nansen: “A man once kept a goose in a bottle, feeding it until it grew too large to get through the bottle neck. Now, how did he get the goose out without killing it or breaking the bottle?”

The master said: “Oh, officer?”

“Yes, Master?”

“There!” the master explained. “The goose is out of the bottle!”

Zen Koan

[Lecter]

Butterfly listens
at the flowerpot:
true teaching.

Issa

[Lecter]

The sound of water
says what I think.

Chuang-Tzu

[Lecter]

Let your mind be like the emptiness of space, like a chip of dead wood and a piece of stone, like cold ashes and burnt-out coal. When this is done, you may feel some affinity with the True Mind. If otherwise, someday you will surely be taken to task by the old man of the other world.

Huang-Po

[Lecter]

A well nobody dug filled with
no water
ripples and a shapeless
weightless man drinks.

Ikkyu

[Lecter]

A master was fanning himself. A monk approached and said: “Master, since the nature of wind is permanent and there is no place it does not reach, why must you still fan yourself?”

“Although you understand the nature of ‘wind is permanent,’” replied the master, “you do not understand the meaning of its ‘reaching everywhere.’”

“What is the meaning of its reaching everywhere?”

The master just fanned himself. The monk bowed.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!

Cuckoo Song

[Lecter]

Lonely cuckoo calling out
Across the mountain village.
When I came, I came to be
Alone, wanting only a life.

Saigyō

[Lecter]

A trout jumps up—
at the bottom of the water
clouds coming and going.

Onitsura

[Lecter]

The weeds at the bottom gently bending down the stream, shaken by the watery wind, still planted where their seeds had sunk, but ere long to die and go down likewise; the shining pebbles, not yet anxious to better their condition; the chips and reeds, and occasional logs and stems of trees that floated past, fulfilling their fate, were objects of singular interest to me, and at last I resolved to launch myself on its bosom and float whither it would bear me.

Henry David Thoreau

[Lecter]

The mind is like water: when it’s still, there is reflection; when disturbed, no mirror. Muddled by folly and craving, fanned by misleading circumstances, it surges and billows, never stopping for a moment. Looking at it this way, where can you go and not be mistaken! It’s like trying to look into a flowing spring to see your own appearance—it never forms.

Seng-Chao

[Lecter]

A school of trout
passed by:
the color of water!

Buson

[Lecter]

To me the meanest flower that blows
Can give thoughts that lie too deep for tears.

William Wordsworth

[Lecter]

When Buddhists are told that the Buddha comes from nowhence and departs nowhither . . . they are at a loss, or they try to snap at empty space, imagining that this may lead them somewhere. But they will never wake up to Zen until their nose is twisted hard and tears come to their eyes.

D. T. Suzuki

[Lecter]

“The first cicada!”
he said—
and pissed.

Issa

[Lecter]

Someone asked Yang-chi: “When Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen, came from India to China, he sat facing a wall for nine years—what does this mean?”

Yang-chi said: “As an Indian, he couldn’t speak Chinese.”

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control—these three alone lead to sovereign power.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

[Lecter]

“Childlikeness” has to be restored with long years of training in the art of self-forgetfulness.

D. T. Suzuki

[Lecter]

Growing older, I love only quietness:
who need be concerned with the
things of this world?
Looking back, what better plan
than this:
returning to the grove.

Li Po

[Lecter]

The farmer pauses,
wipes snotty fingers
on the plum blossom.

Issa

[Lecter]

Asking where the Buddha is, is like hiding stolen loot in your pocket and declaring yourself innocent!

Zen Commentary

[Lecter]

Sit in zazen as if engaged in the fight for your very life!

Dōgen

[Lecter]

. . . on the shore
Of the wide world I stand
alone, and think
Till love and fame to
nothingness do sink.

John Keats

[Lecter]

Living in hell is like taking a walk in a beautiful park.

Lin-Chi

[Lecter]

I came to the flowers;
I slept beneath them;
this was my leisure.

Buson

[Lecter]

The man who’s drunk water knows if it’s cool or warm.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

A monk asked Joshu: “What is the Buddha?”

Joshu replied: “The one in the hall.”

The monk exclaimed: “The one in the hall is a statue, a lump of mud!”

Joshu said: “That is so.”

The monk asked again: “What is the Buddha?”

Joshu said: “The one in the hall.”

Zen Koan

[Lecter]

Ever the same,
unchanged by hue,
cherry blossoms
of my native place.
Spring now has gone.

Dōgen

[Lecter]

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.

Simone De Beauvoir

[Lecter]

Time after time, Master Obaku told his students: “Don’t expect anything from the Three Treasures (the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha—roughly the enlightened one, his truth, and the followers).” Yet time after time he performed deep bows—so deep, in fact, that a large callus had grown on his forehead from where it bumped the hard floor. Finally, catching Obaku in the act of bowing, one of his students challenged him: “You always tell us to expect nothing from the Three Treasures. And yet here you are, making deep bows. Please explain yourself!”

“I don’t expect,” Obaku said. “I just bow.”

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

Live the questions now. Perhaps, then, someday far into the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke

[Lecter]

Sit just to sit. And why not sit? You have to sit sometime, and so you may as well really sit, and be altogether here. Otherwise the mind wanders away from the matter at hand, and away from the present. Even to think through the implications of the present is to avoid the present moment completely.

Alan Watts

[Lecter]

Pai-chang finished a sermon, but seeing all the monks about to leave the hall he called out: “Oh, brethren!”

They all turned back, whereupon the master said: “What is that?”

The students talked for years about this remark.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

A Vinaya master named Yuan asked Hui-hai: “When disciplining oneself in the Tao, is there any special way of doing it?”

“When hungry one eats; when tired one sleeps,” said Hui-hai.

“But that is what other people do,” said Yuan. “Is their way the same as yours?”

“Not the same,” said Hui.

“Why not?” “When they eat, they do not just eat, but conjure up all kinds of imagination; when they sleep, they do not just sleep, they are given to all sorts of idle thoughts.”

The Vinaya master asked nothing further of the Zen master.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

How strange that nature does not knock,
and yet does not intrude!

Emily Dickinson

[Lecter]

The Rose of Sharon
at the side of the road
was eaten by my horse.

Bashō

[Lecter]

The knife does not cut itself, the finger does not touch itself, the mind does not know itself, the eye does not see itself.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

The real cycle you’re working on is the cycle called yourself.

Robert M. Pirsig

[Lecter]

What is to give light must endure burning.

Viktor Frankl

[Lecter]

Hardy and high, above the slender sheaf,
the slimy mallow waves her silken leaf.

George Crabbe, Western “Haiku”

[Lecter]

Summer rain,
clearing up enough for the
larks to sing.
Then again.

Shiko

[Lecter]

We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men...trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make journeys, not very extensive ones, it is true; but our own little comings and goings are only little more than tree-wavings—many of them not so much.

John Muir

[Lecter]

The lake
is bright over there suddenly—
a higurashi sings.

Issa

[Lecter]

A monk asked Gensha: “The masters, when they raised their mosquito brush [hossu], did they signify the essence of Zen?”

“They did not,” said Gensha.

The monk then asked: “What was the meaning of their actions?”

Gensha raised his hossu.

The monk asked: “What is the essence of Zen?”

“When you are enlightened, you will know,” replied Gensha.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

The universe came into being with us together; with us, all things are one.

Chuang-Tzu

[Lecter]

The head is through, but the body is still sticking out.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

Mayoku, Nansen, and another monk were on a pilgrimage when they met an old woman. “Where do you live?” they asked.

“Here,” she said, and led the three of them into her tea shop. Then she made a pot of tea, brought out three cups, and put them on the table. “Let the one who has godlike power drink the tea!”

The three looked at each other, but nobody said anything and no one drank the tea.

“Just watch!” the old woman said. “This silly old woman will show you her full power!” And she took the tea, drank it up, and left.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.

Dōgen

[Lecter]

Kassan had a monk who left and went all around to the various Zen temples, seeking. But no matter where he went, the name of Kassan was mentioned to him as the name of a great master. Finally the monk returned, interviewed Kassan, and asked: “You are reputed to have the greatest understanding of Zen. Why did you not reveal this to me when I was here earlier?”

Kassan said: “When you boiled rice, did I not light the fire? When you passed around food, did I not offer my bowl to you? When did I betray your expectations?”

With that the monk was enlightened.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine.

The Buddha

[Lecter]

All evil karma ever committed by me
since of old,
On account of my beginningless greed,
anger, and ignorance,
Born of my body, speech, and thought—
Now I atone for it all.

Gatha of Atonement

[Lecter]

Chao-chou saw an old woman with a basket and asked her, “Where are you off to?”

“I am going to steal your bamboo shoots!” she replied.

Chao-chou said: “Suppose you meet me soon after? What then?”

The old woman gave him a slap on the face. Chao-chou knew he was defeated, and walked away.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

These branches
must have been seen first of all—
falling blossoms.

Joso

[Lecter]

In mountain light, all sounds return to silence.
All that remains, the temple bell.

Ch’Ang Chien

[Lecter]

Words may express it,
Words cannot hold it:
The way of letters leaves no trace,
Yet the teaching is revealed.

Dōgen

[Lecter]

Think sideways!

Edward De Bono

[Lecter]

The meadows were a-drinking at their leisure; the frogs sat meditating, all Sabbath thoughts, summing up their week, with one eye out on the golden sun, and one toe upon a reed, eyeing the wondrous universe in which they act their part; the fishes swam more staid and soberly, as maidens go to church.

Henry David Thoreau

[Lecter]

The fruit drops when it is ripe.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

The frog rises to the surface
by the strength
of its non-attachment.

Joso

[Lecter]

Unexpectedly you find it, welling upwards in the empty tree.

Rainer Maria Rilke

[Lecter]

A reddish-yellow cow passes by a window. The head, horns, and four legs go past. Why doesn’t the tail too?

Zen Koan

[Lecter]

There are no holy places and no holy people, only holy moments, only moments of wisdom.

Jack Kornfield

[Lecter]

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

André Gide

[Lecter]

The philosopher asks himself, “What is your aim in philosophy?” and he answers, “To show the fly the way out of the bottle.” And where is he when he has made his escape? He is, it appears, exactly where he started; for philosophy “leaves everything as it is.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

[Lecter]

With no bird singing, the mountain is yet more still.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

Consider the sunlight. You may say that it is near, yet if you pursue it from world to world you will never catch it. You may say it is far, yet it is right before your eyes. Chase it and it always eludes you; run from it and it is always there. From this example you can understand how it is with the true nature of things.

Huang-Po

[Lecter]

A monk asked Pai-chang: “Who is the Buddha?”

Pai-chang snapped back: “Who are you?”

“I am so-and-so,” replied the monk.

“And do you know this ‘so-and-so’?”

“Most certainly!”

Pai-chang then raised his mosquito brush and said, “Do you see?”

“I see,” said the monk.

The master made no further remark.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

I have been asked many questions in my life about poetry, religion, life, and I have given precisely the same number of answers, but I have never, I repeat, never, satisfied a single interlocuter. Why? Because all questioning is a way of avoiding the real answer, which, as Zen tells us, is really known already. Every man is enlightened, but wishes he wasn’t. Every man knows he must love his enemies, and sell all he has and give to the poor, but he doesn’t wish to know it—so he asks questions.

R. H. Blyth

[Lecter]

When we are not sure, we are alive.

Graham Greene

[Lecter]

A rat goes onto the Buddhist altar
his head ornamented
with chrysanthemum blossoms.

Takamasa

[Lecter]

When a man is instantly awakened, he comes back to his original mind.

The Vimalakirti Sutra

[Lecter]

To imagine that Zen is mysterious is the first grave mistake which many make about it.

D. T. Suzuki

[Lecter]

The first mystery is simply that there
is a mystery.
A mystery that can never be explained
or understood.
Only encountered from time to time.

Lawrence Kushner

[Lecter]

Yang-shan once asked Chung how one can see into one’s own self-nature. Chung replied: “It is like a cage with six windows, and inside is a monkey. When someone calls ‘Monkey! Monkey!’ at the east window, the monkey answers. Same thing happens at all the other windows.”

“Very instructive,” said Yang-shan. “But what happens if the monkey is asleep?”

At that, Chung jumped down from his straw seat and took Yang-shan’s arm, dancing and saying: “O Monkey! O Monkey! My interview with you is finished!”

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

Sparrows twittering
in the refectory—
evening rain falling.

Shiko

[Lecter]

The shell of a cicada—
it sang itself
utterly away.

Bashō

[Lecter]

Forget not that the earth likes to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

Kahlil Gibran

[Lecter]

God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Lecter]

A monk asked Chao-chou: “A hair’s breadth of difference—and what happens?”

Chao-chou answered: “Heaven and earth are far away.”

The monk continued: “And when there is not a hair’s breadth of difference?”

Chao-chou answered: “Heaven and earth are far away.”

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

The knowledge of the ancients was perfect. How perfect? At first they did not know that there were things. This is the most perfect knowledge—nothing can be added. Next, they knew that there were things, but did not make distinctions between them. Next they made distinctions, but did not pass judgment. When they started to pass judgment, the Tao was destroyed.

Chuang-Tzu

[Lecter]

The firefly
gives light
to its pursuer.

Oemaru

[Lecter]

Zen has been used for healing people’s sicknesses, but it has also been used by the samurai for chopping off people’s heads!

Alan Watts

[Lecter]

Seeking wisdom, the Emperor Gyo sent a messenger to a hermit named Kyoyu, offering to hand the empire over to him. Kyoyu not only flatly refused, but upon hearing such a foul suggestion washed his ears in the river Ei. Another hermit, Sofu, coming there to water his ox and seeing this, led his ox away, saying he would not let it drink such filthy water.

Zen Story

[Lecter]

The whole world is you. Yet you keep thinking there is something else.

Hsueh-Feng

[Lecter]

On the sea of death and life,
the diver’s boat is freighted
with “Is” and “Is not”;
But if the bottom is broken through,
“Is” and “Is not” disappear.

Zen Commentary

[Lecter]

Let the nothingness into your shots.

Golf In The Kingdom

[Lecter]

As naturally as the oak bears an acorn and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done.

Henry David Thoreau

[Lecter]

Storm passes, watch the pines change
color.
Out along the mountain, through the
source,
flowers in the stream reveal Zen’s
meaning:
nothing in between, all words gone.

Liu Ch’ang-Ch’ing

[Lecter]

Settling on a blade of grass,
a dead leaf: the dew does not
discriminate over what to call home.

Soin

[Lecter]

A monk asked Pao-yun: “What is meant by ‘speaking is no-speaking’?”

The master said: “Where is your mouth?”

“I have no mouth,” the monk answered.

“Then how do you eat your rice?”

The monk could make no reply.

Later, another master commented: “That fellow is never hungry.”

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

Naguib Mahfouz

[Lecter]

One day Chih-chuan came to the hall and announced to all the monks that he was going to give a dharma talk. When all the monks came up, he said: “When you have listened properly to the deeds of Kannon, you will be able to behave properly.”

“What are the deeds of Kannon?” the monks asked.

The master snapped his fingers. “Do you hear that?”

“Yes, we hear!” replied the monks.

“This nonsensical company! What do you expect to get by coming here?” And with that the master drove them out of the hall with a stick, laughing heartily to himself, and then returned to his quarters.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

The seasons change, the stars shine in the heavens—it’s perfect wisdom. Regardless of whether we realize it or not, we are nothing but the Way itself.

Dōgen

[Lecter]

You cannot describe it or draw it,
you cannot praise it enough or
perceive it.
No place can be found in which to
put the Original Face;
it will not disappear even when the
universe is destroyed.

Mumon

[Lecter]

In your heart, you already know.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

Whereof one cannot speak, thereon one must remain silent.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

[Lecter]

Mount Fuji
Good in fine weather
Good in the rain:
the original form
never changes.

Zen Commentary

[Lecter]

It may take you three minutes, it may take you thirty years. And I mean that.

Hasegawa, on being asked how long it takes to obtain an understanding of Zen

[Lecter]

What I know of the divine sciences and of Holy Scripture I learned in woods and fields, by prayer and meditation. I have had no other masters than the beeches and oaks.

St. Bernard Of Clairvaux

[Lecter]

I laugh at myself, old man, with no strength left
inclined to piney peaks, in love with lonely paths
oh well, I’ve wandered down the years to now
free in the flow; and floated home the same,
a drifting boat.

Shih-Te

[Lecter]

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation. Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego.

Jean Arp

[Lecter]

A monk came for the teachings, and seeing him approach, Isan made as if to rise.

“Please don’t get up,” the monk said.

“I haven’t sat down yet!” Isan said.

“I haven’t bowed yet,” said the monk.

“You rude creature!” Isan said.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

Flowers in the summer, fires in the fall.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

Chih-chang and Nan-chuan were having tea. Nan-chuan said: “We have been good friends, and though we’ve each gone our own way, we’ve talked about many things. Now what would you say when someone comes up and asks about ultimate things?”

Chih-chang replied: “The ground we sit on is a fine site for a hut.”

“Let your hut alone,” Nan-chuan said. “What about ultimate things?”

Chih-chang took the tea set away and got up. Nan-chuan said: “You have finished your tea, but I have not.”

“The man who talks like that,” said Chih-chang, “cannot consume even a drop of water.”

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

The turnip farmer
points the way
with a turnip.

Issa

[Lecter]

Yet ruined as my house is, you live there!

Thomas Merton

[Lecter]

A single stroke of the prayer bell
wakes me.
Does it also awaken my soul?

Tu Fu

[Lecter]

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

William Stafford

[Lecter]

Millions of people, unseeing, joyless, bluster through life in their half sleep, hitting, kicking, and killing what they have barely perceived. They have never learned to see or they have forgotten that man has eyes to see, to experience.

Frederick Franck

[Lecter]

Empty-hearted in society,
How deeply moved I am
By the snipe calling
In the evening marsh.

Saigyō

[Lecter]

Monks recite the sutras,
Their voices a cacophony.

We make love; afterward our whispers
Mock the empty chanting.

Ikkyu

[Lecter]

A monk asked Ma-tsu the classic Zen question about Bodhidharma coming from the West. The master struck the monk, and said: “If I do not strike you, all the masters will laugh at me.”

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

From the first not a thing is.

Hui-Neng

[Lecter]

Both the slayer
And the slain
are like a dewdrop and a flash
of lightning—
they are thus to be regarded.

Final Verse Uttered by a Dying Samurai

[Lecter]

Doubt everything at least once, even the proposition that two times two equals four.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

[Lecter]

Zen is really extraordinarily simple as long as one doesn’t try to be cute about it or beat around the bush!

Alan Watts

[Lecter]

I read, and sigh, and wish I were a tree;
For sure, then I should grow
To fruit or shade.

George Herbert

[Lecter]

Like a sword that cuts but
cannot cut itself;
Like an eye that sees, but
cannot see itself.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

Why abandon a seat in your own home to wander in vain through dusty regions of another land? If you make one false step, you miss what is right before your eyes.

Dōgen

[Lecter]

Te-shan, a contemporary of Lin-chi, was famous for the statement: “Whether you can say a word or not, you get thirty blows just the same.” So one day Lin-chi told his own disciple, Lo-p’u, to interview Te-shan and when Te-shan tries to give him thirty blows, to take hold of his stick and push him away with it. Everything went as planned until the moment Lo-p’u grabbed the stick—then Te-shan walked quietly back to his room.

When Lo reported this to Lin-chi, the master said: “I had some doubts about Te-shan until now. But do you, Lo-p’u, understand him?”

Lo-p’u hesitated, and Lin-chi gave him thirty blows.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

Peaches and plums don’t talk, and yet the path is naturally made under their blossoms.

Zen Commentary

[Lecter]

Zen wants absolute freedom, even from God.

D. T. Suzuki

[Lecter]

The first man to see an illusion by which men have flourished for decades surely stands in a lonely place.

Gary Zukav

[Lecter]

Sneezing,
I lost sight
of the skylark.

Yayu

[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]

There are no mundane things outside of Buddhism, and there is no Buddhism outside of mundane things.

Yuan-Wu

[Lecter]

Chao-chou and a monk were walking through the garden when a rabbit darted past them. The monk said: “You are a great and wise man—what do you see when a rabbit runs by?”

Chao-chou replied: “I’m mad about rabbits!”

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

The wind is cold;
through the torn paper-screen
the moon of October.

Sokan

[Lecter]

There is something obscure which is
complete before heaven and earth arose;
tranquil, quiet, standing alone without
change, moving without peril.
It could be the mother of everything.
Not knowing its name, I call it Tao.

Lao-Tsu

[Lecter]

In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn than to contemplate.

René Descartes

[Lecter]

You are what you is.

Frank Zappa

[Lecter]

A monk knocked on Bokushu’s door, saying: “Make me understand! I ask you to direct me!”

Bokushu said: “I have a stick here for you!”

The monk had hardly opened the door and began to ask something when Bokushu struck him.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

We have to get quiet. We have to be still, and that’s harder and harder in this century.

Jane Kenyon

[Lecter]

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

Buson

[Lecter]

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

Charlotte Joko Beck

[Lecter]

Zen is like looking for the spectacles that are sitting on your nose.

D. T. Suzuki

[Lecter]

The great master Lin-chi and P’u-hua were having dinner. Lin-chi posed the following: “It is said that a single hair swallows up a great ocean and a mustard seed holds Mount Sumeru. Is this a miraculous occurrence, or is it naturally so?”

P’u-hua, fulfilling his master’s prophecy that he would be a lunatic, overturned the table with his foot.

“How rude!” Lin-chi protested.

“Rude or not,” rebutted P’u-hua, “this is no place for you to make such a remark!”

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

I think we all have a core that’s ecstatic, that knows and that looks up in wonder. We all know that there are marvelous moments of eternity that just happen. We know them.

Coleman Barks

[Lecter]

The autumn storm
stopped blowing—
a rat swimming across the stream.

Buson

[Lecter]

For studying Zen, one should have quiet quarters. Be moderate in food and drink. Cast aside all involvements and discontinue all affairs. Do not think of good or evil; do not deal with right or wrong. Do not intend to make yourself a Buddha, much less be attached to sitting still.

Dōgen

[Lecter]

Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery.

Annie Dillard

[Lecter]

A man is on the highway, yet he has not left his home. Another man, who has left his home, is not on the highway. Which of these two should be respected?

Zen Koan

[Lecter]

Shake off this sadness, and recover your
spirit;
sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
that brushes your heel as it turns going by,
the man who wants to live is the man in
whom life is abundant.

Miguel De Unamuno

[Lecter]

We must learn to see the world anew.

Albert Einstein

[Lecter]

Treading the gingko leaves
a young boy quietly
comes down from the temple.

Buson

[Lecter]

Do not seek to find out what to do. Every what to do is only a general recipe, that is, an abstraction. You will never come back into the truth of your own being riding on the back of an abstraction. If you know what to do, [you can] be sure it is the wrong thing.

Bernard Phillips

[Lecter]

Ma-tsu asked Pai-chang what he would use to demonstrate Zen thought. Pai-chang held up his hossu.

“Is that all?” Ma-tsu asked. “Nothing further?”

Thereupon Pai-chang threw the hossu down.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

Seeing the bellies
of the wild geese in the sky
above the boat.

Kikaku

[Lecter]

The hand that guides the brush has already caught and executed what floated before the mind at the same moment the mind began to form it, and in the end the pupil no longer knows which of the two— mind or hand—was responsible for the work.

Eugen Herrigel

[Lecter]

Pray to God, but hammer away.

Spanish Proverb

[Lecter]

A monk asked Ummon: “What does an enlightened monk do?”

Ummon answered: “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

The monk persisted: “Why haven’t you any idea?”

Ummon replied: “I just want to keep my no-idea.”

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

Not drunk, not sober,
I wander out late.

Crow calls, the moon sinks:
Toiling of the midnight bell.

Ikkyu

[Lecter]

A monk asked Wei-kuan: “Where is Tao?”

Wei-kuan answered: “Right in front of us.”

“Why don’t I see it?” asked the monk.

“Because of your egotism.”

“But if I cannot see it because of my egotism, can you see it?”

“As long as there is ‘I and thou,’” said the master, “this complicates everything and there is no seeing Tao.”

“Then when there is neither ‘I’ nor ‘thou,’ is it seen?”

The master replied: “When there is neither ‘I’ nor ‘thou,’ who is here to see it?”

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

White clouds on East Mountain urge
to keep moving, even if it’s evening,
even if it’s fall.

Chiao Jan

[Lecter]

Zen is a matter of character, not a matter of intellect.

D. T. Suzuki

[Lecter]

A religious person ought, in respect to all the things that he uses, be like a statue which one may drape with clothing, but which feels no grief and makes no resistance when one strips it again. It is in this way that you should feel towards your clothes, your books, your cell and everything else you make use of.

St. Alphonsus Rodriguez

[Lecter]

The autumn moon—
I wandered around the pond
all night long.

Bashō

[Lecter]

Hokusai, one of the great artists in Japanese history, was once summoned by the Emperor to paint at court. He first dipped the feet of a chicken in blue ink and gently dragged them over a long scroll of rice paper. He then dipped a second chicken’s feet in vermilion ink and let that chicken walk freely over the paper. After this was finished, he bowed deeply to the Emperor and presented the painting: “Autumn Leaves Falling on the Yangtze River.”

Zen Story

[Lecter]

As P’an-chang was about to die, he asked the monks: “Is there anyone among you who will produce my likeness?” All the monks tried to do their best, but none of their sketches pleased the master. Then one of his disciples, P’u-hua, came up and said, “I can produce your likeness.”

“If so,” said the master, “why not present it to me?”

P’u-hua performed a somersault and left the room.

“When this monk becomes a teacher, he will be a lunatic!” exclaimed P’an-chang.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

A hole in the bridge—
the horse remembers it
in the evening mist.

Issa

[Lecter]

The religion of no religion.

A Definition of Zen

[Lecter]

The capacity of the mind is broad and huge, like the vast sky. Do not sit with a mind fixed on emptiness. If you do, you will fall into a neutral kind of emptiness. Emptiness includes the sun, moon, stars, and planets, the great earth, mountains and rivers, all trees and grasses, bad men and good men, bad things and good things, heaven and hell. They are all in the midst of emptiness.

Hui-Neng

[Lecter]

I must consider myself as a corpse which has neither intelligence nor will: be like a mass of matter which without resistance lets itself be placed wherever it may please anyone; like a stick in the hand of an old man, who uses it according to his needs and places it wherever it suits him.

St. Ignatius Loyola

[Lecter]

Go in fear of abstractions.

Ezra Pound

[Lecter]

“Just ask, just ask!”
says the dew,
and rolls away.

Issa

[Lecter]

Pai-chang asked Ma-tsu: “What is the ultimate end of Buddhism?”

Ma-tsu said: “This is just where you give up your life.”

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

Pull a five-story pagoda out of a teapot.

Zen Koan

[Lecter]

If we are not totally blind,
what we are seeking is already here.
This is it.

Alan Watts

[Lecter]

These days human beings have forgotten what religion is. They have forgotten a peculiar love which united their human nature to Great Nature. This love has nothing to do with human love. Standing in the midst of nature you feel this love of Great Nature. . . . Zen students must experience this peculiar love. This is religion.

Sokei-An

[Lecter]

If you love the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still bobbing in the ocean of delusion.

Lin-Chi

[Lecter]

What can it mean to “practice Zen”? Are not zazen, koan study, sutra chanting, etc., all contrivances? On the other hand, if all such are to be eliminated, how will the Zen student ever progress from his unenlightened condition to a state of enlightenment?

Bernard Phillips

[Lecter]

My heart’s like the autumn moon
reflecting in the clear pure pool.
Nothing to compare.
What can I say?

Han-Shan

[Lecter]

He comes without lifting a foot,
Teaches without moving his tongue.
No matter how you lead the way,
There is always one you follow.

Zen Commentary

[Lecter]

Yakusan’s death was just like his life. On the verge of dying he yelled out: “The hall’s falling down! The hall’s falling down!”

The monks scrambled to prop it up with various things. Yakusan threw up his hands and said: “None of you understand what I mean.” And then he died.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.

Erich Fromm

[Lecter]

Ling-chao approached the master, Hui-neng, with the following question: “I have left my home to become a monk, and my aspiration is to attain Buddhahood. How should I use my mind?”

“Buddhahood is attained when there is no mind which is to be used for the task,” replied Hui-neng.

“But when there is no mind to be used for the task, who can ever attain Buddhahood?”

“By no-mind,” said Hui-neng generously, “the task is accomplished by itself. Buddha, too, has no mind.”

Zen Mondo

[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 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 of the world.

John Burroughs

[Lecter]

A single atom of the sweetness of wisdom in a man’s heart is better than a thousand pavilions in Paradise.

Abu Yazid Al-Bistami

[Lecter]

Cutting off the root directly,
this is the mark of Buddhahood;
if you go on plucking leaves and
seeking branches,
I can do nothing for you.

Yung-Chia

[Lecter]

One monk, the cook at Nansen’s order, invited another monk, the gardener, to have a meal together. As the gardener filled his bowl, a Nembutsu bird sang. The gardener tapped the armrest of his chair, and the bird sang again. He tapped his armrest again, and the bird stopped singing.

“Do you understand?” the gardener asked the cook.

“No,” the cook replied.

The gardener tapped once more.

Zen Fairy Tale

[Lecter]

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.

Rumi

[Lecter]

The moon reflected in the stream, the wind blowing through the pines in the cool of the evening, in the deep midnight—what is it for?

Yung-Chia

[Lecter]

A monk asked Shozan: “Is there a sentence that does not belong to the realm of right or wrong, is or is not?”

“There is,” said Shozan.

“What is it?” asked the monk.

“A single cloud floating in the sky has nothing ugly about it.”

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

Now that I’ve shed my skin completely,
One true reality alone exists.

Zen Saying

[Lecter]

The invariable mark of wisdom is seeing the miraculous in the common.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Lecter]

Day begins with the morning bell.
Night is long, empty moon still in the sky.
Everything must end.

Fujiwara No Ietaka

[Lecter]

Say the word Buddha and you wallow in mud and flounder in puddles. Say the word Zen and your whole face is as red as a beetroot with shame and humiliation.

Zen Commentary

[Lecter]

I paint a window just as I look out of a window. If a window looks wrong in a picture open, I draw the curtain and shut it, just as I would in my own room. One must act in painting as in life, directly.

Pablo Picasso

[Lecter]

The first winter shower:
the tall cedar trees
of my home.

Issa

[Lecter]

The first winter shower:
My name shall be
“Traveler.”

Bashō

[Lecter]

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it until it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

Henry David Thoreau

[Lecter]

Each one of you is perfect as you are. And you all could use a little bit of improvement.

Shunryu Suzuki

[Lecter]

One day Ummon asked: “How can we make our religion proper?” Before any of the monks could speak, he answered himself: “Moo!”

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

Friedrich Nietzsche

[Lecter]

A monk of Kassan’s went to Kotei and had just bowed to him when Kotei struck him on the back. The monk bowed again, Kotei struck him again. The monk went away, and when he told Kassan about this, Kassan asked: “Do you understand?”

“No,” the monk replied.

“That’s a good thing,” said Kassan, “for if you did, I’d have been amazed.”

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

No thought, no reflection, no analysis,
no cultivation, no intention;
Let it settle itself.

Tilopa

[Lecter]

You can outdistance that which is running after you, but not what is running inside you.

Rwandan Proverb

[Lecter]

In Zen, the effort and the result are not two different things, the means and the goal are not to be separated, the finding occurs in the very seeking itself. For ultimately, what is sought is the wholeness of the seeker, and this emerges only in the wholeheartedness of the seeking.

Bernard Phillips

[Lecter]

One day Chinso was up on a tower with a few officials when one of them, seeing a group of monks, said, “Look, monks on a pilgrimage.”

“Not so,” said Chinso.

“How could you say it’s not so?” asked an exasperated official.

“Wait till they get near, and I will examine them.”

The monks arrived, and Chinso called out: “Reverend gentleman!”

They all raised their heads and looked at him.

“What did I tell you?” said Chinso to the official.

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

In the deepest mountains and remotest peaks, where for a thousand years, for ten thousand years, no man has ever set foot—can we find Buddhism there or not? If you say yes, what kind of Buddhism is it? And if you say no, then Buddhism is not universal.

Gensha

[Lecter]

As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to live it more and more.

Jules Renard

[Lecter]

Practice and enlightenment are not two.

Dōgen

[Lecter]

I raise my hand; I take a book from the other side of the desk; I hear the boys playing outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the neighboring woods—in all these I am practicing Zen, I am living Zen. No wordy discussion is necessary, nor any explanation.

D. T. Suzuki

[Lecter]

Cutting off all speech,
all thought,
there is nowhere that
you cannot go.

Seng-Tsan

[Lecter]

Man knows that he springs from nature and not nature from him. This is an old and very primitive knowledge.

Loren Eiseley

[Lecter]

The lay disciple P’ang asked Ma-tsu: “How does water with no bones or muscles support a boat weighing ten thousand tons?”

Ma-tsu answered: “Here is neither water nor boat, and what muscles and bones are you talking about?”

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

Something has to die in order for us to begin to know our truths.

Adrienne Rich

[Lecter]

We invent nothing, truly. We borrow and re-create. We uncover and discover. All has been given, as the mystics say. We have only to open our eyes and hearts, to become one with that which is.

Henry Miller

[Lecter]

Deep in the mountains,
In a tree on a farm,
A single dove sings out,
Searching: lonely voice of evening.

Saigyō

[Lecter]

Trust shows the way.

Hildegard of Bingen

[Lecter]

Without a place and with a place to rest—living darkly with no ray of light—I burn myself away.

St. John of the Cross

[Lecter]

A sudden winter shower—
I on my sleeping mat—
it lightens up.

Issa

[Lecter]

The greatest thing about religion is that it makes life large.

Robert Haas

[Lecter]

A monk asked Bokushu: “We are always putting on and taking off our clothes, and eating our food—is there any way of avoiding this?”

Bokushu said: “By putting on and taking off our clothes, and by eating.”

“I don’t understand,” the monk said.

Bokushu said: “Not understanding is wearing clothes, eating food.”

Zen Mondo

[Lecter]

Little boat, bamboo hat—
the old man alone,
fishing in the snowy river.

Liu Tsung-Yuan

[Lecter]

The Tao is what happens of itself.

Lao-Tsu

[Lecter]

The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

Li Po

[Lecter]

The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Lecter]

This year,
yes, even this year
has drawn to its close.

Buson