“I meant: what do I want to do now, who do I want to be now? And I look at these questions from the perspective of someone with twenty years left, or twenty-five, whatever, of active public life, and I have no ambitions, none, I don’t want to prove anything to anybody, I don’t want to convince the world of anything anymore, I don’t want to work. I want to be as peaceful as possible and think and read and maybe write a little, just journals and notes, you know, like a blog. But on paper. I’ll tell no one about it.”
Source: Crazy Sorrow
“When I listen to that distant call [of the cuckoo], I become freshly aware of a sense of oneness with everything that exists. At such moments I come to see that everything is flowing together like a timeless river, and I become thoroughly convinced of this reality. The invisible becomes clearer than the visible, and the eternal becomes closer than the present. ,,, One of the tragedies of modernity is that artificial sounds are making it impossible to hear the sounds of eternity. They are cutting off the sounds that come from within the deepest part of us.”
Source: The Sound of Water, The Sound of Wind: And Other Early Works by a Korean Monk
“Cum la origine toate lucrurile sunt vide, nu trebuie să ne agățam de nimic, asta este Calea pentru un călugăr zen.”
Source: Enigma Rikyū
“Trying to understand the meaning of life in terms of the human brain's activities is like trying to understand the ocean by going to the shore and scooping out a bucket of water and analyzing it.”
Source: There Is No God and He Is Always with You: A Search for God in Odd Places
“Much of the contemporary American atheistic movement seems to be treating atheism like a new kind of religion. ... It's just that some atheists are so damn evangelical about their nonreligion they might as well be ringing doorbells and handing out leaflets.”
Source: There Is No God and He Is Always with You: A Search for God in Odd Places
“Awaken from the chase of everything
and feel at peace with a blanket of nothing”
“She often found herself caught in a rapture for minutes at a time, sometimes longer. But someone observed that she was never enraptured while she was cooking breakfast. If she were, she might burn it. Eternity can dovetail into our practical lives. It's possible for us to manage the toast and the rapture.”
Source: Inner Gold: Understanding Psychological Projection
“As Hsiang-yen put it,
"There's no use for artificial discipline,
For, move as I will, I manifest the ancient Tao."
At this level, human life is beyond anxiety, for it can never make a mistake. If we live, we live; if we die, we die; if we suffer, we suffer; if we are terrified, we are terrified. There is no problem about it. A Zen master was once asked, "It is terribly hot, and how shall we escape the heat?" "Why not," he answered, "go to the place where it is neither hot nor cold?" "Where is that place?" "In summer we sweat; in winter we shiver."
In Zen one does not feel guilty about dying, or being afraid, or disliking the heat. At the same time, Zen does not insist upon this point of view as something which one ought to adopt; it does not preach it as an ideal.
For if you don't understand it, your very not-understanding is also IT. There would be no bright stars without dim stars, and, without the surrounding darkness, no stars at all.”
“Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all.”
“Si mantienes tu mente despejada, encontrarás felicidad en todas partes. Es la paz completa, como la mente de un niño, que no se apega a nada.”
Source: Wanting Enlightenment Is a Big Mistake: Teachings of Zen Master Seung Sahn