Never rely on a second arrow. If you rely on a second arrow you will be careless with the first.
Every time you must be convinced that you have only one choice, and that you must hit your target with your one and only arrow.
Kenko-Khosi, 1283–1350, Japanese author and Buddhist monk, Essays in Idleness
We rarely contact this simple moment,
so used to constant input and excitement,
we lack fine-tuning into all the subtleties of this instant, the ability to register a quiet aliveness without the stirring of expectation.
Toni Packer, 1927-2013, teacher and writer.
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand;
the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.
George Eliot
If we’ve been eating a regular meal of resentment toward our spouse, our boss, our parents, or “the world,” the boat’s going to come back around in the next minute because it’s accustomed to us filling our plate. But we must be able to ask and to discover, “Who was I before I resented my spouse? And even before that?”
This is the primary way we learn to live in our True Self, where we are led by a foundational “yes,” not by the petty push backs of “no.”
Richard Rohr
Zen is not some fancy, special art of living.
Our teaching is just to live,
always in reality, in its exact sense.
Shunryu Suzuki Roshi
Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Manon, Ballerina
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