Tao/zen quotes
You have said it, but you have not understood.
(Jesus of Nazareth)
We take refuge in pride because we are
afraid to tell the truth to ourselves.
(Kakuzo Okakura)
"This is my child, this is my
wealth": such thoughts are the preoccupations of fools. If we are unable to own
even ourselves, why make such claims?
(Buddha)
The samurai must maintain his faith in
his beliefs, even as the social or political climate shifts and alters. He must
be patient, must act in a manner that may at times seem irrational or illogical,
must resist the temptations of instant gratification, and must work towards
fulfilling what may seem to be an impossible idea.
As a result, the samurai is often something of an outsider, a rebellious figure
because he refuses to conform to the habits of the day.
(Takahiro Kitamura)
Why is the tao so valuable?
Because it is everywhere,
and everyone can use it.
This is why those who seek
will find,
And those who reform
will be forgiven;
Why the good
will be rewarded,
And the thief who is cunning
will escape.
(Lao Tzu)
Taoism furnished the basis for aesthetic
ideals, zen made them practical.
(Kakuzo Okakura)
When facing a single tree, if
you look at a single one of its red leaves, you will not see all the others.
When the eye is not set on one leaf, and you face the tree with nothing at all
in mind, any number of leaves are visible to the eye without limit. But if a
single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.
(Takuan
Soto)
She did not consciously think, "Ah, today I learned this and that; I gained this
much." You do not do it step by step that way, by adding on coatings of varnish,
or new paint. When learning becomes you, then it appears as you need it, when
you are being you. Sometimes true learning surprises you when it emerges.
(Chungliang Al Huang)
The art of teaching is clarity
and the art of learning is to listen.
(Vanda Scaravelli)
The tao is both singular and
universal. It is open to all with the resolve and inclination to walk it. Those
who do, however, take a variety of disciplines in approaching it, for the tao
extrapolates from the specific to the general.
(Dave Lowry)
If only
there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were
necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.
But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.
And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
Without the tao,
Kindness and compassion are replaced by law and justice;
Faith and trust are supplanted by ritual and ceremony.
(Lao Tzu)
In the history of Chinese civilisation, no significant scientific
advances came as a result of Confucian studies. They were scholastics, and a
scholastic in those times was one who went by the book, who believed what the
ancient text or the ancient scriptures said, and who studied them and became
proficient in them like a rabbi or a Christian theologian.
But mystics have never been very interested in theology. Mystics are interested
in direct experience, and therefore - although you may laugh at them and say
they are not scientific - they are empirical in their approach. And the taoists,
being mystics, were the only great group of ancient Chinese people who seriously
studied nature. They were interested in its principles from the beginning, and
their books are full of analogies between the taoist way of life and the
behaviour of natural forces seen in water, wind, or plants and rocks.
(Alan Watts)
Simplicity
before understanding is simplistic; simplicity after understanding is simple.
(Edward De Bono)
Kindness
should become the natural way of life,
not the exception.
(Buddha)
After a heavy snowfall the more rigid
branches
of the pine break under the weight of the snow,
but the more supple willow branches bend,
thus allowing the snow to fall to the ground.
(Tao: Sacred Symbols)
The judgements of particular times,
places and people depend on subjective standpoints and therefore are not the
same thing as objective truths in themselves.
(Cleary)
Taoism is neither formal religion or structured philosophy.
(Tao: Sacred Symbols)
The dynamic nature of their philosophy laid more stress upon the process
through which perfection was sought than upon perfection itself.
(Kakuzo Okakura)
A good rest is half the work.
(Yugoslav proverb)
Remembering a wrong is like carrying a
burden on the mind.
(Buddha)
When something has happened,
Do not talk about it.
it is hard to collect spilled water.
(Proverb)
However young,
The seeker who sets out upon the way
Shines bright over the world.
(Buddha)
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.
(Martin Luther King)
Great knowledge is broad, small knowledge is
petty.
Great talk is powerful, small talk is loquacious.
(Chuang Tzu)
A special contribution of zen to Eastern
thought was its recognition of the mundane as of equal importance with the
spiritual.
It held that in the great relation of things there was no distinction of small
and great, an atom possessing equal possibilities with the universe
(Kakuzo Okakura)
People will not compete with you if you don't
make much of your own cleverness.
(Cleary)
The clouded mind sees
nothing.
(The Shadow)
As a
warrior you take responsibility for holding the balance
between light and dark within you and, by extension,
the world around you, and ultimately when you go deep enough,
the universe.
(Barefoot Doctor)
The things we touch have no permanence.
My master would say: there is nothing we can hold onto in this world.
Only by letting go can we truly possess what is real.
(Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon)
There is seldom any rational reason for having regrets about past deeds or
events.
Because the past does not exist in any way other than in your memory.
(Paul Wilson)
Find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life.
(Confucius)
Page created 15 May 2003