Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Matthew 6:28-29

Fundamentally the marksman aims at himself.
Zen in the Art of Archery

If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
Dogen

Our life is frittered away by detail …
Simplify, simplify
Thoreau

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le Guin

Knock on the sky and listen to the sound!
Zen saying

What is your original face before your mother and father were born?
Zen Koan

It is as hard to see one's self as to look backwards without turning around.
Thoreau

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
John Lennon

When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.
Samuel Johnson

Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
The Buddha

1. Out of clutter, find simplicity.
2. From discord, find harmony.
3. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
Albert Einstein, three rules of work

Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.
Shunryu Suzuki

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
Kahlil Gibran

He did each single thing as if he did nothing else.
Charles Dickens

That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great.
Willa Cather

Two monks were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was falling. Coming around the bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.

"Come on, girl," said the first monk. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.

The second monk did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. "We monks don't go near females," he said. "It is dangerous. Why did you do that?"

"I left the girl there," the first monk said. "Are you still carrying her?"
Zen story

In walking, just walk.
In sitting, just sit.
Above all, don't wobble.
Yun-men

Comparisons are odious.
Popular Fourteenth-Century Saying

Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.
Chinese proverb

For everything that lives is holy; life delights in life.
William Blake

Anything more than the truth would be too much.
Robert Frost

Luis Ponce de Leon, returning to his university after five years' imprisonment by the inquisition, resumed his lectures with the words: "As we were saying yesterday …"

Every day is a good day.
Yun-men

Do not, I beg you, look for anything behind phenomena.
They are themselves their own lesson.
Goethe

We shape the clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.
Tao te Ching

The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides!
Artur Schnabel

No one's mouth is big enough to utter the whole thing.
Alan Watts

When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; yes, and when I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts drift to far-off matters for some part of the time, for some other part I lead them back again to the walk, the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, to myself.
Montaigne

Chop wood, carry water.
Zen saying

Unformed people delight in the gaudy and novelty.
Cooked people delight in the ordinary.
Zen saying

I can't go on.
You must go on.
I'll go on.
Samuel Beckett

And do not change. Do not divert your love from visible things. But go on loving what is good, simple and ordinary; animals and things and flowers, and keep the balance true.
Rilke

Meditation is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end.
Krishnamurti

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