Great Throughts Treasury

"You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair."

"A master was walking in the mountains. When he came back, one of his disciples asked him: "Master, where do you go to walk?" In the mountain" Answered the master. The disciple insisted, "But what path did you take? What did you see?" The master answered, "I followed the smell of flowers, and I wandered with the young shoots." We must let ourselves be guided by the dharma of the Buddha and have confidence in the grass and the flowers that grow, without goal or ego, naturally and unconsciously. The master's answer flows from the spring of wisdom. True wisdom is created beyond knowledge and memory."

"Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance."

"If you are not happy here and now, you never will be."

"If you have a glass full of liquid you can discourse forever on its qualities, discuss whether it is cold, warm, whether it is really and truly composed of H-2-O, or even mineral water, or saki. Meditation is Drinking it!"

"Keep your hands open, and all the sands of the desert can pass through them. Close them, and all you can feel is a bit of grit."

"Life is a fight. You must remain concentrated and not reveal your defects. Through continuous training and self-control, gradually you discard them."

"Religions remain what they are. Zen is meditation. Meditation is the foundation of every religion. People today feel an intense need to go back to the source of religious life, to the pure essence in the depths of themselves which they can discover only through actually experiencing it. They also need to be able to concentrate their minds in order to find the highest wisdom and freedom, which is spiritual in nature, in their efforts to deal with the influences of every description imposed upon them by their environment. Human wisdom alone is not enough, it is not complete. Only universal truth can provide the highest wisdom. Take away the word Zen and put Truth or Order of the Universe in its place."

"The Ten New Principles of Zen True Zen means to follow the absolute cosmic system with the practice of the body. 1. Be afraid! for cosmic system 2. Wake up! to cosmic consciousness, satori-highest truth 3. Be happy! Love every existence 4. Believe! No doubt. 5. Get up early! with sun. 6. Sit down calmly! in zazen. 7. Stand up and walk! on the great Earth 8. Eat right! fresh and natural foods. 9. Work! with samu spirit. 10. Sleep early and deeply! with sun."

"Think with your whole body."

"Time is not a line, but a series of now-points"

"To receive everything, one must open one's hands and give."

"Train the body and develop stamina and endurance. But the spirit of competition and power that presides over them is not good, it reflects a distorted vision of life. The root of the martial arts is not there."

"We feel our shell keeps us safe, but it crushes us and others, and keeps out light and sun."

"We should learn to think with our fingers."

"You are the strongest and the others keep their distance. It is no longer necessary to win victories over them."

"You have to practice until you die."

"You must not take out your sword because if you try to kill someone, you must die for it yourself. What you must do instead is kill yourself, kill your own mind."

"Zen is not a particular state but the normal state: silent, peaceful, unagitated. In Zazen neither intention, analysis, specific effort nor imagination take place. It's enough just to be without hypocrisy, dogmatism, arrogance — embracing all opposites."

"Every being and everything in the universe exist only in terms of its coexistence with other beings and other things. The independence of a being or thing is the result of the interdependence of all beings and all things."

"It's cutting all ties with whatever it is, depersonalizing from head to toe, as the soul itself sunken shown with all the power of his unspeakable origin."

"Life is a fight. You must remain concentrated and not reveal your defects. Through continuous training and self-control, gradually you discard them.""

"Most women go through life looking for love, and looking for someone to treat them like a queen. For some women finding real love seems to be something that will never happen. I believe that finding love is not as hard as people make it seem. The reason that some women can't find real love is because they look for more than just real love. A lot of women know what they need in a relationship, and thats for a man to love that woman with all of his heart, and to treat her real good. Most women have guys in their life or guys that try to get with them that could really love them and treat them real good. Those are usually the guys that get forced into that friend zone or rejected upfront. See those guys could give them what they need, but not what they want. Wants can be anything from a woman wanting a man to have certain materialistic things, or she could want him to look a certain way, those are a few examples of the things that some of them want, but they vary depending on the female. What some females don't understand is that none of the things that they want has anything with love or how that person will treat you. You could find a man that looks perfect, has a house and car, he can be a college graduate with a good job, and you could still end up being with a person that doesn't truly love you, and will treat you like shit. What I am trying to say is that the person who could treat you good and really love you could already be in your life, but you could have been blinded by the things you want in a man so you overlooked the person that you were really looking for. And by the way there are men that do the same thing; I just wanted to be clear on that."

"Following the Smell of Flowers As told by Taisen Deshimaru Roshi A master was walking in the mountains. When he came back, one of his disciples asked him: "Master, where do you go to walk? "In the mountain" Answered the master. The disciple insisted, "But what path did you take? What did you see?" The master answered, "I followed the smell of flowers, and I wandered with the young shoots." We must let ourselves be guided by the dharma of the Buddha and have confidence in the grass and the flowers that grow, without goal or ego, naturally and unconsciously. The master's answer flows from the spring of wisdom. True wisdom is created beyond knowledge and memory."

"No one can understand Zen through books and lectures. This is us discover the origin of manifested life. We cannot nurture the image of the apple, nor can we know without touching if the water is hot or cold."

"Think with the whole body."

"Time is not a line, but a series of now-points."

"To receive everything, one must open one?s hands and give."

"Your world and the cat's world are not the same."

"Zen is not a particular state but the normal state: silent, peaceful, unagitated. In Zazen neither intention, analysis, specific effort nor imagination take place. It's enough just to be without hypocrisy, dogmatism, arrogance -- embracing all opposites."