The dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows in still water and the like, if too eagerly hunted, become merely shows and mock us with their unreality. Go out of the house to see the moon, and it is mere tinsel. It will not please us as much as when its …
What is any man’s discourse to me, if I am not sensible of something in it as steady and cheery as the creak of crickets? Henry David Thoreau.
Whatever is beautiful at all is beautiful in itself. Its beauty ends there, and praise has no part in it. Nothing is the better or the worse for being praised. Thus true beauty needs nothing beyond itself, any more than law, or truth, or kindness, or honor. For none of these gets a single grace …
In the works of mankind, as in those of nature, it is really the motive which is chiefly worth attention. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Basho was a master of the ninth century. One day he was sitting with his feet across the garden-path. A monk came along with a wheel-barrow. Tuck in your feet, said the monk. What has been extended cannot be retracted, answered Basho. What has been started cannot be stopped cried the monk who then pushed …
There is a characteristic of Zen which cannot be found in any other practice or in any religion. That is to say, its peculiar mode of expressing profound religious insight by such actions as the lifting up of a hair-brush, or by the tapping of the chair with a staff, or by a loud outcry, …
To learn and then do. Is that not a pleasure? Confucius.
Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it, has enough of truth. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe