Oct. 4:

If you don’t find God in the next person you meet, it’s a waste of time looking for him further.

MOHANDAS K. GANDHI

Oct. 10:

When you try to set your mind to it, you miss it. When you stir your thoughts, you turn away from it. If you do not try and you do not stir, you are living in stagnant water. What do you do?

ZEN SAYING

[quote/] Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.

---

The Yoda man speaketh. Means he that one should attempt not, but must attain, yes. Enough of that. I pull from it you shouldn't make a half hearted attempt at something, either go for it or don't.

Always been partial to aliens.

Oct. 11:

When one has much to put into them, a day has a hundred pockets.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

So said the Artful Dodger to Oliver Twist.

Oct. 12:

To establish ourselves amid perfect emptiness in a single flash is the essence of wisdom.

DHAMMAPADA SUTRA

Oct. 13: You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.

JACK KORNFIELD

Harlan, you beat me to it this morning.

"Enlightenment is the thorough abandonment of any notion of enlightenment; it is putting an end to the pursuit of happiness" - Barry Magrid in Ordinary Mind

"Past and future have their uses as tools of learning but our humanity does not need to be constantly opressed by these linear concepts."
-Mu Soeng in Trust in Mind

"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

10/16:

All things in the world come into being from being.
Being comes into being from non-being.

LAO-TZU

10/17:

The believer is happy, the doubter is wise.

GREEK PROVERB

The "don't cares" are ambivalent?

10/18:

When we realize the everlasting truth of “everything changes,” and find our composure in it, we find ourselves in nirvana.

SHUNRYU SUZUKI

Eye of the Storm, baby!!!!!

10/19:

Every morning, our first thought should be a wish to devote the day to the good of all living beings.

DILGO KHYENTSE RINPOCHE

Alls I wanted to do was win the lotto. Or have a coffee and doughnut.

I am in the too selfish dept, I think.

Better than me. My first thought is to make it to the bathroom before the kids.

10/20:

Awake!

The other SAT question:

Wake is to Sleep

as Zen is to ____ ?

Wake is to Sleep

as Zen is to Sarcasm ?

Wake is to Sleep,

as Zen is to Kata?

Awake, asleep...

...Zen Is.

Ah...I am Enlightened.

Zen is to Zen.

10/23:

You say that my poems are poetry. Well they are not, and until you understand why they are not, you won’t see their poetry.

RYŌKAN

What do you know...somebody actually reads this thread!

That IS weird. It looked fine on my computer when I posted it.

It should be 'Ryokan'.

I actually thought someone actually called himself/herself/itself that, seeing that it is a Zen thread, and having an unpronounceable name is Zenishly cool.

Yeah, that's our problem. We think too much.

Oct. 24:

Study the living word, not the read word.

ZEN SAYING

10/25:

Right now a moment of time is passing by!...We must become that moment.

PAUL CÉZANNE

It takes more than a moment to realise a moment is passing by.

"There is no such thing in anyone's life as an
unimportant day.”

~ Alexander Humphreys Woollcott

I can tell he never worked at my job....

Look at the upside...a boring job gives one plenty of time to reflect.

Oct. 27:

There is pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is rapture in the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music is its roar.
I love not man the less, but nature more.

LORD BYRON

I like this one

Oct. 30:

There is not enough nothing in it.

JOHN CAGE

Sound advice for too busy art. Need empty space to balance and contain the form.

10/31:

To take for permanent that which is only transitory is the delusion of a madman.

KALU RINPOCHE

To take as transitory that which is permanent is the delusion of a deadman.
-Ed Morris

Ed,

Dog gone it! Seriously, I was going to post something exactly like it. Great minds do think alike.

11/1 (sounds like another Hallow's Eve type post!):

Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.

IZUMI SHIKIBU

11/2:

What the poet is
looking for is not
the fundamental I
but the deep you.

ANTONIO MACHADO

Arhhmmm, hhmmm (in a big Mr. T accent):

"I is U, fool!"

I love Mr. T.

11/3:

The most important thing in music is what is not the notes.

PABLO CASALS

That'd be the instrument.

I thought it was the spaces between.

Or would that be the player? No music unless there's some one there to notice it.

Inwardly alert, open, calm.
Outwardly upright, extended, filled with spirit.
This is the foundation of stillness.
Add the hard and the soft, the powerful and the relaxed,
Motion and stillness, contraction and extension:
In the instant these converge, there is power.

Wang Xiang Zhai

The Way of Power by Lam Kam Chuen

11/6:

Resting in mind is the nature of such.

-my friend Josh.

11/7:

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.

RUMI

11/8:

Yüeh-shan promised to give his monks a dharma talk. Instead he sat deep in zazen. Afterward, the head monk followed him back to his room and angrily said: “You promised to give a dharma talk. But you didn’t say a word.”

Yüeh-shan said: “For sutras there are sutra specialists. For commentaries there are commentary specialists. What do you expect from this old monk?”

ZEN MONDO

That's actually kind of neat.

11/9:

The only thing that we can know is that we know nothing and that is the highest flight of human reason.

LEO TOLSTOY

11/10:

I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received.

ANTONIO PORCHIA

That would be that funky tie I had to return to Macy's for this nice tee-shirt. Gift receipts are a real boon to mankind.

Ahhh...you would not be my friend for long with that habit.

There is an unspoken agreement in our family: to keep all crappy gifts. When you know someone is going to visit, you pull out the unwanted gifts they ever gave you...the candles, the unused household gifts like afghans or teasets, and put them out for use. A rather odd feeling to go to someones house, and see years old gifts being used for the first time. They gotta really love you to put on 'ugly' ties at Thanksgiving.

To be honest, Harlan, I have never returned a gift and have accepted too large and too small clothes and whatever.

It IS the thought that counts.

No thought

11/13:

Buddha? Dharma? Zen? Tao? If you cling to names you will be blocked from the mystery. We use a net to catch fish. The fish are not the net.

KU-SHAN

Yes, but without a net, you have no fish.

Use your hands, a hook, a spear



or dynamite

11/14:

Who am I? Who is carrying this body?

JACK KORNFIELD

I think we all feel this way from time to time. And I think the illusion is that we are separate from our encasing body.

11/16:

An adult is one who has lost the grace, the freshness, the innocence of the child, who is no longer capable of feeling pure joy, who makes everything complicated, who spreads suffering everywhere, who is afraid of being happy, and who, because it is easier to bear, has gone back to sleep. The wise man is a happy child.

ARNAUD DESJARDINS

Oooh! A happy child. I guess in some respects that's true. On the other hand, to measure my existence from bed wetting to incontinence and be happy none the less takes a major shift in my psyche.

11/17:

If we knew that tonight we were going to go blind, we would take a longing, last real look at every blade of grass, every cloud formation, every speck of dust, every rainbow, raindrop—everything.

PEMA CHÖDRÖN

11/20:

We must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.

INDIRA GANDHI

I knew I heard Yoda say that once. And depends when and if you took your riddlin.

11/21:
This table has four legs. A table with a broken leg remains a table. But a table from which the four legs have been removed becomes only a flat piece of wood. At what moment did it cease to be a table?

CARLO SUARéS

You know when I was growing up, often times for a late night snack, a small blanket would be laid out on the living room floor and my brother and I would eat that way with legs folded as my mother brought out food. The floor was the table and the blanket marked its boundaries.

So to answer the question, the table remains a table as long as it is perceived usable as a table. The consideration of legs is moot if tables where you come from don't have legs. The blanket we used was a blanket, until we used it as a table.

11/22:

If you would seek to know everything; then do not seek to know anything.

ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS

Yeah...a master of none kind of thing. Zen at its best!

11/24:

One day at the monastery of Master Fugai Ekun, ceremonies delayed preparation of the noon meal, which forced the cook to hurry. He took up his sickle and quickly gathered vegetables from the garden, then threw it all into a soup pot—unaware that in his haste he had cut off the head of a snake.
At the meal the monks were highly complimentary of the delicious soup, but the Roshi himself found something odd in his bowl. He summoned the cook and held up the snake head. “What is this?!?”
“Oh, thank you, Roshi!” the cook said, and immediately ate it.

“EATING THE BLAME” ZEN STORY

11/27:


If treacherous talk is constantly in your ears, and unwanted thoughts are constantly in your mind, you can turn these about and use them as whetstones to enhance your practice. If every word that came to your ears was agreeable, and all things in your mind were pleasant, then your whole life would be poisoned and wasted.


THE TS’AI-KEN T’AN

Exceptional timing on posting that one.

Thank you.

11/28:

Ashes are ashes, firewood is firewood; firewood does not become ash, nor ashes return to wood.

DŌGEN

Ashes are dust and go into the ground, and from the ground trees arise. Thus the circle of life continues.
-Me

Quote:

---

DŌGEN

---

? It's happened again.

Molecules and energy.

Hmmm...what IS it about Dogen?

11/29:

Break out from inside,
and your power is strong. Break in from outside,
and your power is weak.

ZEN SAYING

Quote:

---

Break out from inside,
and your power is strong. Break in from outside,
and your power is weak.

---

My brother-in-law has been through many an earthquake and has always recommended to me, upon personal experience, to have a safety axe in the home to break through jammed doors or chop through portions of collapsed roofs. And he is indeed strong.

A burgalar breaking into my home would be met with 9mm + P hollow points and would hopefully be the weaker of us two.

Just a thought.

-B

11/30:

No man is born wise.

DON QUIXOTE

If no one is born wise, that means it's learned. If no one is born with a preset personality, that means it's learned. Ergo, people learn to be wise asses.

12/1:

"A little nonsense, now and then, is relished by the wisest men." - Willy Wonka

For the more literate:

"Mingle a little folly with your wisdom; a little nonsense now and then is pleasant." - Horace

Quote:

---

Sorry to bring such dull technical nonsense into the forum.

---

seriousness and nonsense are the yin and yang of our lives. Wouldn't want to be locked into any room with a pedantic and droll professor.

Read it...or not.

12/11:

Once the mind is clear, the very word clarity is like a snowflake on a red hot stove.

ZEN SAYING

Yep...I get it. The very thought of defining the moment, throws you out of the moment. It's the state of "being" between the cosideration of being--and not being.

12/12...counting down:

When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.

SHUNRYU SUZUKI

It's not worth doing unless you're going to put your all into it. Mr. Suzuki put it much more eloquently.

12/13:

Self is the true refuge of self.

THE BUDDHA

Our conscious appreciation of self starts from the self....refuge or sactuary or realistic origin and endplace... I don't know, but I like the "self."

12/14:

Do not desire to become a Buddha;
let sitting or lying down drop away.
Be moderate in eating or drinking.
Be mindful of the passing of time,
and engage yourself in zazen as
though saving your head from fire.

DOGEN

(Ahem....did anyone notice that I didn't screw up DŌGEN this time? )

Glad to know you fixed that thing.

OK, my western upbringing might twist that around a bit:

Andy Munthe:
A shot glass of desire is greater than a pitcher of talent.

i prefer baileys

Hmmm...aren't you underage/too young to drink?

Quote:

---

i prefer baileys

---

12/15:

Death never takes the wise man by surprise, he is always ready to go.

LA FONTAINE

Thats what I was just thinking the oth....GAACK, MMMPPH, PUHHHHHhhhh.

Alas, poor Ed...we hardly knew ye. I guess it's too late to ask...any regrets?

{last gasping breath} ...'I would have liked a dojo birthday party hosted by before I died...'

fffwwaaMMP! {inhale. exhale. dead.}

Ha...Ha...Ha...!

You know, I know a few dojos, for a $150.00, could swing you a real nice deal. We would have the Nija Bouncy House, Head Bands that said EM Soke on them (only a dollar extra per participant) and get a cheap katana to slice the cake....door prizes would include being yelled at by the sensei of your choice who wouldn't show any techniques, but would bark at you until you did something...and then incrementally adjusted your posture like a really bad chiropractor.

Additional promotional items, extra.

12/18:

Awareness of emptiness brings forth the heart of compassion.

GARY SNYDER

For me, awareness of emptiness brings forth the full pitcher of beer!

I guess one could say it's compassionate to pour beer for someone else.....alright, I'll buy that statement.

12/19:

The shortest answer is doing.

GEORGE HERBERT

Even shorter...Not doing! There, got some Zen in that one.

12/20:

To set up what you like against what you dislike—this is the disease of the mind.

THE HSIN-HSIN MING

Yin-Yang and the circle of life. I can almost hear Elton John singing.

12/21:

My religion is to live and die without regret.

MILAREPA

Ahh...almost too late for that one. Regrets I have, feeling sorry for myself...not much of that though, gratefully.

12/22:

Clouds too know the flavor
of this mountain life.

CHING AN

12/26:

Simplifying our lives does not mean sinking into idleness, but on the contrary, getting rid of the most subtle aspect of laziness: the one which makes us take on thousands of less important activities.


MATTHIEU RICARD

12/27:

For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river.

GHALIB

12/28:

We speak of falsehood as completely false
And of truth as completely true;
But outside of truth there is no falsehood
And outside of falsehood there is no truth.
How can those who practice the Way
Diligently search for the truth?
If we examine our own hearts,
There is delusion, there is truth.

RYOKAN

I don't see it as a search for THE truth. We are all finding our own truths.

not being truthful to ourselves is where the paths deviate.

...or I could be full of it.

12/29:

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

PLATO

*struggling not make reference to events past on the forum*

12/30:

Moonlight and the wind in the pines
are all known.
Zen mind and delusion distinguish
sage and fool.
Go back to the place where not one
thought appears—
how else should I put this into words
for you?

HAN-SHAN

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
~ Albert Einstein

Last one of the year.

12/31:

darkness wrapped in
darkness:
this, the end of every
quest.


SHIH-SHU