Tag: Stones on the Path

“For forty years I’ve been selling water
By the bank of a river. Ho, ho!
My labors have been wholly without merit.”
~Sogaku Harada

“Living beings are numberless; I vow to serve until all are liberated. Ignorance and grasping is boundless; I vow to transform and uproot it all.”
~Vows of the Boddhisattvas

“How often have you been willing to look at your face in the mirror, without being embarrassed? How many times have you tried to shield yourself by reading the newspaper, watching television, or just spacing out? That is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: how much have you connected with yourself at all in your whole life?”
~Chogyam Trungpa

“If only I may grow: firmer, simpler — quieter, warmer.”
~Dag Hammarskjöld

“I don’t seek enlightenment, nor am I deluded, I don’t worship Buddha, nor am I disrespectful. I don’t sit for long periods, not am I lazy. I don’t eat only once a day, nor am I a glutton. I am not contented, nor am I greedy. When the minds does not seek anything, this is called the Way.”
~Jayata

“From the outset your own nature is pure.”
~The P’s-sa-chieh

“No matter how much
I contemplate this tea bowl
It is still — a tea bowl!
Thus I arrive in San Francisco.”
~Soen Nakagawa

“Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself.”
~Carl Sagan

“Our poetry now is the realization that we possess nothing. Anything therefore is a delight, since we do not possess it, and thus need not fear its loss.”
~John Cage

“I have been reading your Descartes. Very interesting. ‘I think, therefore I am.’ He forgot to mention the other part. I’m sure he knew, he just forgot: ‘I don’t think, therefore I’m not.'”
~Katagiri Roshi