“Student: Master, you are a wise man, give me the secret of happiness! Master: Is there a nail where you are sitting? Student: No, master. Master: Then you're happy! Student: What if I said there is a nail on my seat, master? Master: Then I would say stand up and be happy!”
“In sumi-e, he said, as in haiku aur in any Zen training, the aim was to develop a discipline so sure and a spirit so true that one could afford to be atleast spontaneous; to get into such a state of deliberateness that as soon as one put pen to paper, one would produce something powerful and true.”
Source: The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto
“In sumi-e, he said, as in haiku or in any Zen training, the aim was to develop a discipline so sure and a spirit so true that one could afford to be atleast spontaneous; to get into such a state of deliberateness that as soon as one put pen to paper, one would produce something powerful and true.”
Source: The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto
“As I read deeper in the Zen poets, I soon stumbled upon Ikkyū, the fifteenth-century sword-wielding monk of Daitokuji, who had entered a temple at the age of six and gone on to express his contempt for the corrupt monasteries of his time in famously controversial poems. Like the Sixth Dalai Lama, in his way, Ikkyū had been a patron - and a laureate - of the local taverns, and of the pretty girls he had found therein; and like his Tibetan counterpart, or John Donne in our own tradition, he had deliberately conflated the terms of earthly love with those of devotion to the Absolute. The very name he gave himself, "Crazy Cloud", had played subversively on the fact that "cloud water" was a traditional term for monks, who wandered without trace, yet "cloud rain" was a conventional idiom for the act of love. His image of the "red thread" ran through the austere surroundings of his poems as shockingly as the scarlet peonies of Akiko. And in his refusal to kowtow to convention, the maverick monk had turned every certainty on its head: whores, he said, could be like ideal monks - since they inhabited the ideal Zen state of "no min" - while monks, in selling themselves for gold brocade, were scarcely different from whores. Many of his verses trembled with this ambiguity. One couplet, taken one way, was translated as "Making distinctions between good and evil, the monk's skill lies in knowing the essential condition of the Buddha and the Devil"; taken another way, it meant: "That girl is no good, this one will do; the monk's skill is in having the appetite of a devilish Buddha.”
Source: The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto
“I believe that people who are devoutly religious, within any specific religion, have no true respect for the ultimate vastness that is God.”
Source: The Cowboy and the Cossack
“Live the Present t's given to you now!
It's the presence that changes its essence.
Vibrate as one with all around somehow
Embracing all, feel the Power of Awareness.
(acrostic LIVE from the book A+Cross Tic)
#flowerpower”
Source: ACross Tic
“While there is nothing wrong with thinking big and chasing your dreams, it is also sad when you realize that most of us tend to forget how to “live in the moment.” We become so overwhelmed by our own thoughts and feelings of the past and the future that we forget all about how precious the present is.”
Source: Zen: The Secrets You Need to Know to Achieve the Zen Mindset and Happiness in Life
“Mentally focus your attention on the part of you that needs healing. Now slowly take a deep breath, slowly filling your lungs to capacity while you send the oxygen to the part of you that needs healing. Now slowly breathe out, visualizing the ailing part being healed.”
Source: That Was Zen, This Is Tao: Living Your Way to Enlightenment, Illustrated Edition
“The way to peace is to be peaceful.”
Source: That Was Zen, This Is Tao: Living Your Way to Enlightenment, Illustrated Edition
“You suffered, not realizing that the events were part of the plan to give you strength, wisdom, and good fortune.”
Source: That Was Zen, This Is Tao: Living Your Way to Enlightenment, Illustrated Edition