Your Daily Zen Practice

Slowly the thinker went on his way and asked himself. What is it that you wanted to learn from teachings and teachers, and although they taught you much, what was it they could not teach you? And he thought, it was the self, the character and nature of which I wished to learn. I wanted to rid myself of the Self, to conquer it. Herman Hesse, Siddhartha.

Your Daily Zen Practice

Hourly and earnestly strive to do what falls to your hand with perfect unaffected dignity, with kindliness, freedom and justice, and free your soul from every other imagination. Marcus Aurelius.

Your Daily Zen Practice

There is no remembrance which time does not obliterate, nor pain which death does not terminate. Cervantes.

Your Daily Zen Practice

There is no scent so wholesome as that of the pines, nor any fragrance so penetrating and restorative as the life-everlasting in high pastures. Henry David Thoreau.

Your Daily Zen Practice

If the stars should appear, one night in a thousand years, Oh how men would believe and adore, how they would preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which they had been shown! From Emerson, Nature.

Your Daily Zen Practice

Think about the really nice breakfast you had this morning. Stop stressing over the driver in the car  in front of you. French toast. Focus on that.

Your Daily Zen Practice

Everyone gives what he has. The soldier gives strength, the merchant goods, the teacher instruction, the farmer rice, the fisherman fish. Siddhartha, Herman Hesse.

Your Daily Zen Practice

Waste not what remains of life in too much consideration about what others do. You can be sure you are neglecting other work if you occupy your thoughts with what someone else is doing, what he is saying or thinking, or scheming. All such things divert you, from the steadfast guardianship of your own soul. Marcus Aurelius.

Your Daily Zen Practice

True love cannot be divided, and must be voluntary and unconstrained. Cervantes.

Your Daily Zen Practice

I saw here the most brilliant rainbow that I ever imagined. It was just across the stream below the precipice, formed on the mist which this tremendous fall produced. And I stood on a level with the keystone of its arch. It was not a few faint prismatic colors merely, but a full semicircle only four or five rods in diameter, though as wide as usual, so intensely bright as to pain the eye, and apparently as substantial as an arch of stone. Henry David Thoreau, A Yankee in Canada.

Your Daily Zen Practice

Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and is not reminded of the impermanence of all things? Paraphrased from Emerson, Nature.

Your Daily Zen Practice

The highest truths cannot be written down or taught by speech. A man who cannot write a word, can yet contemplate his own heart and become wise. Bodhidharma, From Zen and Art, by Arthur Waley.

Your Daily Zen Practice

Is it not probable that the Brahmins were the first legislators of the earth? The first philosophers? The first theologians? From Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary.

Your Daily Zen Practice

In shooting, the arrow need not go right through the target, for all men are not the same in strength. Confucius.

Your Daily Zen Practice

Piety is not an end, but a means. A means of attaining the highest culture, by the purest tranquility of soul. Johann Vulfgong Von Gurteh