All Quotes By Tag: Zen

“A boddhisattva is someone who is on the way to becoming a buddha. All of us become boddhisattvas as soon as we start to take our Zen work seriously and the work we do contributes to creating a world in which all good actions become more efficacious.”

“Hearing a crow with no mouthCry in the deepDarkness of the night,I feel a longing forMy father before he was born.”

“When composing a verse let there not be a hair’s breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.”

“The right art,” cried the Master, “is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede. What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will. You think that what you do not do yourself does not happen.”

“we’re lost where the mind can’t find usutterly lost”

“Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one’s heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations—there you will find the essence of true art, religion, and science.”

“Don’t think of what you have to do, don’t consider how to carry it out!” he exclaimed. “The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise.”

“that stone Buddha deserves all the birdshit it getsI wave my skinny arms like a tall flower in the wind”

“Haiku is not a shriek, a howl, a sigh, or a yawn; rather, it is the deep breath of life.”

“Silence is the language of Om. We need silence to be able to reach our Self. Both internal and external silence is very important to feel the presence of that supreme Love.”

“Wild woman are an unexplainable spark of life. They ooze freedom and seek awareness, they belong to nobody but themselves yet give a piece of who they are to everyone they meet. If you have met one, hold on to her, she’ll allow you into her chaos but she’ll also show you her magic.”

“The illusion of ‘I’ is that you think you are ‘I’ while you are only ‘am’; and that ‘am’ is the first person singular of the verb ‘to be’. Since, for ‘to be’ you don’t need to say ‘I’, but for to say ‘I’ you need ‘to be’, thus you are prior to ‘I’ as ‘am’, and that ‘am’ is ‘to be’; therefore, to that note, on the ocean of ‘am’ alone, ‘I’ is only a wave.”

“Neither to heaven nor to hell, my journey is towards my home.”

“The moral of the story is that seeking truth, rather than fear of pain or the desire for happiness, is the correct orientation toward inner work, since seeking happiness makes you its prisoner just as surely as does pain.”

“The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinion for or against. The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikes is the disease of the mind.”