Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
In Zen, poverty is voluntary, and considered not really as poverty so much as simplicity, freedom, unclutteredness.
Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we're not alone.
To feel that life is meaningless unless “I” can be permanent is like having fallen desperately in love with an inch.
...the habitual dualist's solution to the problem of dualism: to solve the dilemma by chopping off one of the horns.
There is no way of making a hedge grow like pruning it. There is no way of making sex interesting like repressing it.
There is nothing at all that can be talked about adequately, and the whole art of poetry is to say what can't be said.
Do not let the rapidity with which these thoughts can change deceive you into feeling that you think them all at once.
And it came to pass that in the hands of the ignorant, the words of the Bible were used to beat plowshares into swords
Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.
If you insist on being determined by the past that's your game, but the fact of the matter is it all starts right now.
Our normal sense of the person as a lonely island of consciousness, is a dramatic illusion based on theological imagery.
You find out that the universe is a system that creeps up on itself and says 'Boo' and then laughs at itself for jumping.
There is a peculiar contradiction in trying to be a member of a republic while believing that the universe is a monarchy.
To go out of your mind at least once a day is tremendously important. By going out of your mind, you come to your senses.
This-the immediate, everyday, and present experience-is IT, the entire and ultimate point for the existence of a universe.
You will begin to realize that if you contemplate long enough on the leaf of the flower, that it involves the whole universe.
The difficulty for most of us in the modern world is that the old-fashioned idea of God has become incredible or implausible.
The style of God venerated in church, mosque, and synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe.
Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.
Where do I begin and end in space? I have relations to the sun and air which are just as vital parts of my existence as my heart.
The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe.
You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.
If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly.
To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, “I am listening to this music,” you are not listening.
LSD is simply an exploratory instrument like a microscope or telescope, except this one is inside of you instead of outside of you.
We know that from time to time there arise among human beings people who seem to exude love as naturally as the sun gives out heat.
Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself.
When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique.
It is obvious that the only interesting people are interested people, and to be completely interested is to have forgotten about "I".
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.
...the whole universe is through and through the playing of love in every shade of the word's use, from animal lust to divine charity.
Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
We have a strange anxiety in us; that if we don't interfere then it won't happen. Now that's the root of an enormous amount of trouble.
Philosophy is man’s expression of curiosity about everything and his attempt to make sense of the world primarily through his intellect.
We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.
To play so as to be relaxed and refreshed for work is not to play, and no work is well and finely done unless it, too, is a form of play.
If you are ready to wake up, you are going to wake up. If you're not you are going to stay pretending that you are just a poor little me.
Zen... does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
When we attempt to exercise power or control over someone else, we cannot avoid giving that person the very same power or control over us.
Meditation is the way in which we come to feel our basic inseparability from the whole universe, and what that requires is that we shut up.
When one speaks of awakening, it means de-hypnotizatio n; coming to your senses. But of course to do that, you have to go out of your mind.
It's time to question a job or career move when it seems like most energy is devoted to making things appear other than what they really are.
The greater part of human activity is designed to make permanent those experiences and joys which are only lovable because they are changing.
Make a spurious division of one process into two, forget that you have done it, and then puzzle for centuries as to how the two get together.
Hospitals should be arranged in such a way as to make being sick an interesting experience. One learns a great deal sometimes from being sick.
The trouble with many religions, accused of wishful thinking, is that they are not wishful enough. They show a deplorable lack of imagination.
A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with Reality, and lives in a world of illusion.
Enlightenment remains unrealized so long as it is considered as a specific state to be attained, and for which there are standards of success.
They are enlightened who join in this play knowing it as play, for people suffer only because they take as serious what the gods made for fun.
What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking is painful, and that when we imagine that we have found it, we don’t like it.