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“I'd love to give you something
but what would help?”
― Ikkyu, Crow With No Mouth

“1. A Cup of Tea

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), recieved a university professor who came to inqure about Zen.
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he could no longer restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"
"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your up?”
― Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps

“To live in the Great Way is neither easy nor difficult, but those with limited views are fearful and irresolute: the faster they hurry, the slower they go, and clinging cannot be limited: even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment is to go astray. Just let things be in their own way and there will be neither coming nor going. Obey the nature of things (your own nature), and you will walk freely and undisturbed.”
― Sengstan, Hsin Hsin Ming

“Feeling guilt dims our light. Instead of dimming our light to make others feel more comfortable, we could just continue to shine and foster the rise of the vibrations of those around us.

Being Happy and Feeling Good does not mean you have no compassion for the misery of those around you. It simply means you won’t dim your light to make them feel comfortable �� instead, you’re going to help light the way.

At first, your light may be a bit too bright for others and it may hurt their eyes, yet it’s far better to shine rather than to hide your light. When you hide your light for too long, it extinguishes and you slip right back into darkness…unable to find your way until someone ‘shiny�� comes along to light your way and help you to find the light you still possess within, your Soul’s Magnificence.”
― Alaric Hutchinson, Living Peace: Essential Teachings For Enriching Life

“The love of nature is religion, and that religion is poetry; these three things are one thing. This is the unspoken creed of haiku poets.”
― Reginald Horace Blyth

“One thing, all things: move among and intermingle, without distinction. To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection. To live in this faith is the road to non-duality, because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.”
― Sengstan, Hsin Hsin Ming

“Nothing divides one so much as thought.”
― Reginald Horace Blyth

“When thought is in bondage the truth is hidden, for everything is murky and unclear, and the burdensome practice of judging brings annoyance and weariness. What benefit can be derived from distinctions and separations?”
― Sengstan, Hsin Hsin Ming

“13. A Buddha

In Tokyo in th Meiji era there lived two prominent teachers of opposite characteristics. One, Unsho, an instructor in Shingon, kept Buddha's precepts scrupulously. He never drank intoxicants, nor did he eat after eleven o'clock in the morning. The other teacher, Tanzan, a professor of philosophy at the Imperial University, never observed the precepts. When he felt like eating he ate, and when he felt like sleeping in the daytime he slept.

One da Unsho visited Tanzan, who was drinking wine at the time, not even a drop of which is supposed to touch the tongue of a Buddhist.

"Hello, brother," Tanzan greeted him. "Won't you have a drink?"

"I never drink!" exclaimed Unsho solemnly.

"One who never drinks is not even human," said Tanzan.

"Do you mean to call me inhuman just because I do not indulge in intoxicating liquids!" exclaimed Unsho in anger. "Then if I am not human, wht am I?"

"A Buddha," answered Tanzan.”
― Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps

“Accept the past as the past and realize that each new day you are a new person who doesn’t need to carry old baggage into the new day with you. It’s amazing how many people ruin the beauty of today with the sorrows of yesterday. Yesterday doesn’t exist anymore! For example, if ever I feel foolish or guilty about something I’ve done, I learn from it and attempt to do better the next time. Shame or guilt serves no one. Such feelings actually keep us down, often lowering the vibrations of those around us, as well. Living in the present moment is the recurring baptism of the soul, forever purifying every new day with a new you.”
― Alaric Hutchinson, Living Peace: Essential Teachings For Enriching Life

“there is no problems, only solutions".”
― Vesa Peltonen

“The importance and unimportance of the self cannot be exaggerated.”
― Reginald Horace Blyth

“For the unified mind in accord with the Way all self-centered striving ceases. Doubts and irresolutions vanish and life in true faith is possible. With a single stroke we are freed from bondage; nothing clings to us and we hold nothing. All is empty, clear, self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind's power.”
― Sengstan, Hsin Hsin Ming

“Be honest. This applies to every area of your life. Sketchiness is not an attractive trait. No more trying to cover up your baggage, sweeping things under the rug, withholding truth, blatant lying, or even telling seemingly ‘harmless�� white lies or half-truths �� release the need to lie completely! Start NOW.”
― Alaric Hutchinson, Living Peace: Essential Teachings For Enriching Life

“There is a bench in the back of my garden shaded by Virginia creeper, climbing roses, and a white pine where I sit early in the morning and watch the action. Light blue bells of a dwarf campanula drift over the rock garden just before my eyes. Behind it, a three-foot stand of aconite is flowering now, each dark blue cowl-like corolla bowed for worship or intrigue: thus its common name, monkshood. Next to the aconite, black madonna lilies with their seductive Easter scent are just coming into bloom. At the back of the garden, a hollow log, used in its glory days for a base to split kindling, now spills white cascade petunias and lobelia.

I can't get enough of watching the bees and trying to imagine how they experience the abundance of, say, a blue campanula blosssom, the dizzy light pulsing, every fiber of being immersed in the flower. ...

Last night, after a day in the garden, I asked Robin to explain (again) photosynthesis to me. I can't take in this business of _eating light_ and turning it into stem and thorn and flower...

I would not call this meditation, sitting in the back garden. Maybe I would call it eating light. Mystical traditions recognize two kinds of practice: _apophatic mysticism_, which is the dark surrender of Zen, the Via Negativa of John of the Cross, and _kataphatic mysticism_, less well defined: an openhearted surrender to the beauty of creation. Maybe Francis of Assissi was, on the whole, a kataphatic mystic, as was Thérèse of Lisieux in her exuberant momemnts: but the fact is, kataphatic mysticism has low status in religious circles. Francis and Thérèse were made, really made, any mother superior will let you know, in the dark nights of their lives: no more of this throwing off your clothes and singing songs and babbling about the shelter of God's arms.

When I was twelve and had my first menstrual period, my grandmother took me aside and said, 'Now your childhood is over. You will never really be happy again.' That is pretty much how some spiritual directors treat the transition from kataphatic to apophatic mysticism.

But, I'm sorry, I'm going to sit here every day the sun shines and eat this light. Hung in the bell of desire.”
― Mary Rose O'Reilley, The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd

“It takes courage to become authentic. So many talk about the light but not enough speak the truth about the struggles it takes to get there and the tools to overcome it all.”
― Nikki Rowe

“We took a bus to the nearby monastery of one of the last great Tang dynasty Chan masters, Yun-men. Yun-men was known for his pithy “one word�� Zen. When asked “What is the highest teaching of the Buddha?�� he replied: “An appropriate statement.�� On another occasion, he answered: “Cake.�� I admired his directness.”
― Stephen Batchelor, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist

“The real ugliness lies in the relationship between people who produce the technology and the things they produce, which results in a similar relationship between the people who use the technology and the things they use.”
― Robert M. Pirsig

“Your Treasure House is in yourself, it contains all you need”
― Hui Hai, Zen Teaching of Instantaneous Awakening: being the teaching of the Zen Master Hui Hai, known as the Great Pearl

“It’s all about reprogramming our minds to focus more on what brings us joy.”
― Alaric Hutchinson, Living Peace: Essential Teachings For Enriching Life

“As we live out of such a mind, we become generous, with no sense of tolerance. We become patient, with no sense of putting up with anything. We become compassionate, with no sense of separation. And we become wise, with no sense of having to straighten anyone out.”
― Steve Hagen

“I did not believe in stalemates. I believed in resolutions, one way or another, and if I found myself on the losing end, so be it. Losing meant quiet, and forgetting quickly, and giving up nothing of any real worth to me. I did not debate restaurant bills, politics, wrongly delivered mail, divorces. These things were officiously loud, and silence was always best.”
― Soren Narnia, A Listing of the Holdings of the National Museum of Romance

“5. If You Love, Love Openly

Twenty monks and one nun, who was named Eshun, were practicing meditation with a certain Zen master.

Eshun was very pretty even though her head was shaved and her dress plain. Several monks secretly fell in love with her. One of them wrote her a love letter, insisting upon a private meeting.

Eshun did not reply. The following day the master gave a lecture to the group, and when it was over, Eshun arose. Addressing the one who had written her, she said: "If you really love me so much, come and embrace me now.”
― Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps

“Canning is a whole world of a thing to do. It requires that you get out of your head. It's a Zen thing. You cannot be wondering about your inadequacies and how they drove Bob off and be making jelly. You'll wind up with big, cylindrical jujubes.”
― Debby Bull, Blue Jelly: Love Lost & the Lessons of Canning

“Winslow bounced over on the balls of his feet, clearly not experiencing any sort of crash. 'Aren't your guys nervous? I'm nervous as all hell.'
'There's nothing to be nervous about,' Beck said, joining them. 'Nerves are only useful when they can spur you on to work harder, faster, better. Once the work is done, they become pointless.”
― Louisa Edwards, Too Hot To Touch

“I must go there today -
Tomorrow the plum blossoms
Will scatter.”
― ���ō�첹��, Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf: Zen Poems of Ryokan

“It’s important that meditation is not seen as something that only happens when you are seated in a quiet place. Otherwise spirituality and our daily life become two separate things. That’s the primary illusion—that there is something called “my spiritual life,�� and something called “my daily life.�� When we wake up to reality, we find they are all one thing. It’s all one seamless expression of spirit.”
― Adyashanti, True Meditation: Discover the Freedom of Pure Awareness

“Whatever the world dishes up, we take it on--not on our own terms, but on the world's.”
― Steve Hagen

“In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes: so with time present.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci

“Heart-Mind, left to its natural state, is vast as a panorama of Nature. - from The School of Soft-Attention: Poems”
― Hawk of the Pines (Frank LaRue Owen)