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Quote by Kenneth S. Leong

“When you can do nothing, what can you do? [...] This is the most amazing, yet most obvious and logical answer: that in the certainty of death, one should get as much out of life as possible. Paradoxically it is the absence of choice in this matter that allows us to have more inner freedom.”

Quote by Kenneth S. Leong

Book:The Zen Teachings of Jesus

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The Zen Teachings of Jesus

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Kenneth S. Leong

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“Death is treated like a taboo in our culture, and all medical efforts are directed toward fighting this law of nature. But perhaps there is a beautiful side of death. [...] Perhaps death is God's wabi-sabi.”

Book:The Zen Teachings of Jesus

Source: The Zen Teachings of Jesus

“In the Parable of the Great Banquet, many of those who failed to share the joy of the feast were ordinary people who were simply too busy with their future-oriented life. As the invitation came, they ignored it and went off to tend their everyday business. Like most people, they felt that it is more important to make a living than to go to a feast and make merry. In a word, they are too "serious.”

Book:The Zen Teachings of Jesus

Source: The Zen Teachings of Jesus

“I renounced what I considered to be my Christian faith at around age seventeen, not without fear and trembling. I found the idea of using God as a crutch totally distasteful. I preferred to be on my own. In hindsight I now see that my apparent abandonment of "faith" has actually paved the way for real faith. Sometimes, it is necessary to tear down the old so that the new can be built.”

Book:The Zen Teachings of Jesus

Source: The Zen Teachings of Jesus

“Every day is a good day" does not mean hitting the jackpot everyday. Nor does it mean getting a promise from God or Buddha. Rather it refers to the blissful state in which one can accept reality totally and unconditionally.”

Book:The Zen Teachings of Jesus

Source: The Zen Teachings of Jesus

“The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails”

God Artists Fingernails Impartial

Author:James Joyce

“A sure sign of false faith is its militant stance. While true faith is marked by its gentleness to all aspects of life, false faith can be easily identified by its stubbornness, inflexibility, paranoia, and a desperate need to be right.”

Book:The Zen Teachings of Jesus

Source: The Zen Teachings of Jesus

“[O]ur existential anxiety originates not from the objective state of reality but from our inflated expectations. The main problem is the discrepancy between our belief that we can handle everything by ourselves and the fact that, as mortals, we have several limitations. Unaware of this, we try to do the impossible: to control the uncontrollable, to predict the unpredictable, to hold on to the impermanent, and to secure the unsecurable. This illusion of omnipotence becomes our torture.”

Book:The Zen Teachings of Jesus

Source: The Zen Teachings of Jesus

“The fact of life is that the appreciation of true beauty cannot start without total renunciation. [...] But to live beautifully, one needs an unfettered mind, a mind that is not clogged up with all kinds of attachments, opinions, or fossilized ways of looking at things. There is no need to get rid of anything as long as we can sever our attachments to it.”

Book:The Zen Teachings of Jesus

Source: The Zen Teachings of Jesus

“This is self-abandonment: to live in the moment, not feeling the pressure to achieve something, not thinking about winning or losing, not worrying about acting foolish, breaking away from the neurosis of restraint or defense, enjoying the beauty of the moment yet not holding on to it, letting go without thinking about the need to let go, feeling the happiness without hoping for the happiness to continue, having no ego or attachment to anything. It is not work but pure play. It is not a matter of striving but wu-wei. It is not something planned for but a spontaneous event.”

Book:The Zen Teachings of Jesus

Source: The Zen Teachings of Jesus

“D.T. Suzuki notes that "when Zen wants you to taste the sweetness of sugar, it will put the required article right into your mouth and no further words are said." In this sense, Zen is direct and not intermediated, concrete and not abstract, practical and not theoretical, sensual and not intellectual, down-to-earth and not otherworldly.”

Book:The Zen Teachings of Jesus

Source: The Zen Teachings of Jesus