Your Daily Zen Practice

How happy I am to be able to wander among bushes and herbs, under trees and over rocks. no man can love the country as I love it. Woods trees and rocks send back the echo that man desires. Ludvig Von Beethoven, the Man and the Artist As Revealed in his own Words.

Your Daily Zen Practice

Music lulls the disordered thoughts, and elevates the dejected spirits. Cervantes.

Your Daily Zen Practice

Why not consecrate ourselves to the queen of the Camelias, and revel in the warm stream of sympathy that flows from her altar? In the liquid amber within the ivory porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Lao tsu, and the ethereal aroma of Buddha himself. From The Book of Tea, by Kakuzo Okakura.

Your Daily Zen Practice

Constant complaining is a way to avoid having regret. Montaigne.

Your Daily Zen Practice

Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it, has enough of truth. Johann Vulfgong Von Gurteh.

Your Daily Zen Practice

To learn and then do. Is that not a pleasure? Confucius.

Your Daily Zen Practice

If you are attacked with regard to your style, never reply. It is for your work alone to make answer. from Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary.

Your Daily Zen Practice

Eno was a great Zen master of the seventh century. He had lost his parents when he was young and earned his living by gathering firewood. One day when he was in the market-place he heard someone reading the Diamond Sutra. He asked where such books were to be had and was told, From Master Konin on the Yellow Plum-blossom Hill. Accordingly, he went to Konin’s Monastery in Anhui and presented himself before the Master. Where do you come from, asked Master Konin. Eno answered, From the South. Bah, said Master Konin. In the South they do not have Buddha in their souls. Eno replied. North and South? These are human distinctions that Buddha knows nothing about. Eno was immediately accepted by the Master as his brother monk. He later became the sixth and last patriarch of Zen. From Zen and Art, by Arthur Waley.

Your Daily Zen Practice

The grass does not refuse To flourish in the spring wind. The leaves are not angry At falling through the autumn sky. Who, with whip or spur Can urge the feet of Time? The things of the world flourish and decay, Each at its own hour. From The Sun, by Li Po, translated by Arthur Waley.

Your Daily Zen Practice

We are sure of nothing in this life. Cervantes.

Your Daily Zen Practice

The least change in our point of view, gives the whole world a pictorial air. A man who seldom rides, needs only to get into a coach and traverse his own town, to turn the street into a puppet-show. The men, the women, the talking, running, bartering, fighting, an earnest mechanic, a lounger, the beggar, the boys, the dogs, all seem instantly unreal. Or at least wholly detached from any relationship to the observer. Everyone is seen as illusory, not substantial beings. From Emerson, Nature.