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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #zen
You’ve got to live right, too. It’s the way you live that predisposes you to avoid the traps and see the right facts. You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. That’s the way all the experts do it. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn’t separate from the rest of your existence. If you’re a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren’t working on your machine, what trap avoidance, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh? It all goes together ... The real cycle you're working in is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be "out there" and the person that appears to be "in here" are not two separate things. They grow toward Qaulity or fall away from Qaulity together. ↗
Activities such as chanting, bowing, and sitting in zazen are not at all wasted, even when done merely formally, for even this superficial encounter with the Dharma will have some wholesome outcome at a later time. However, it must be said in the most unambiguous terms that this is not real Zen. To follow the Dharma involves a complete reorientation of one's life in such a way that one's activities are manifestations of, and are filled with, a deeper meaning. If it were not otherwise, and merely sitting in zazen were enough, every frog in the pond would be enlightened, as one Zen master said. Dōgen Zenji himself said that one must practice Zen with the attitude of a person trying to extinguish a fire in his hair. That is, Zen must be practiced with an attitude of single-minded urgency. ↗
#dharma #focus #frogs #meditation #urgency
What happens to the drop of wine That you pour into the sea? Does it remain itself, unchanged? It is as if it never existed. So it is with the soul: Love drinks it in, It is united with Truth, Its old nature fades away, It is no longer master of itself. The soul wills and yet does not will: Its will belongs to Another. It has eyes only for this beauty; It no longer seeks to possess, as was its wont-- It lacks the strength to possess such sweetness. The base of this highest of peaks Is founded on nichil, Shaped nothingness, made one with the Lord. ↗
There are any number of reasons to want novels to survive. The way [Jonathan] Franzen thinks about it is that books can do things, socially useful things, that other media can't. He cites -- as one does -- the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard and his idea of busyness: that state of constant distraction that allows people to avoid difficult realities and maintain self-deceptions. With the help of cell phones, e-mail and handheld games, it's easier to stay busy, in the Kierkegaardian sense, than it's ever been. Reading, in its quietness and sustained concentration, is the opposite of busyness. "We are so distracted by and engulfed by the technologies we've created, and by the constant barrage of so-called information that comes our way, that more than ever to immerse yourself in an involving book seems socially useful," Franzen says. "The place of stillness that you have to go to to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, where you can actually engage productively with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world. ↗
We have to make a consideration: emotional states are deeply influenced by external events, and here lies the problem. Since the external events are unstable, namely, that they are in perpetual change - a situation that Buddhist tradition defines as “impermanence” - they are very difficult to be managed, and this bring people to panic. This difficulty to experience a reality in which nothing is permanent, that all is in constant motion- change, belongs to the human incapacity to accept the discontinuity of an occurrence of events that are always unpredictable and new. Impermanence is a principle that is a natural thing, but, in relation to the social and interhuman fields, this becomes a problem: especially in the last ten years, we can witness scenarios where instability, turbulence and uncertainty, frantically increase and continue to increase. Instability and change are perceivable everywhere - from the personal interaction between people to economic instability: in poor words, we don’t know what the future will bring to us and we feel a continuous pressure. People feel a need for safety and stability, but this is an impossible thing in the conditions in which society finds itself, and here lies one of the main reasons why tensions, anxiety, and panic have became common situations. ↗
#gurdjieff #mindfulness-practice #present-moment #zen #change
