If you look for the truth outside yourself
It gets further and further away
Today, walking alone, I meet him everywhere I step
He is the same as me, yet I am not him
Only if you understand it in this way
will you merge with the way things are.
Dongshan, 9th Century China, Chan Buddhist monk (Stephen Mitchell translation)
Most people think they will regret foolish actions more than foolish inactions. But studies show that nine out of ten people are wrong. Indeed, in the long run, people of every walk of life seem to regret not having done things much more than they regret things they did.
Dan Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness
In Zen meditation, we learn how to breathe with phrases, inquire of them, take them beyond conventional styles of understanding. We allow thought to arise, but not grasping thought, not being caught up in thought, not driving thought with our fear, desire, our smallness, as we usually do. So that instead of interpreting or explaining the phrases, trying to gain mastery over them, we allow ourselves to feel the phrases deeply, below the level of our conceptual mind.
In one story, Wu is sweeping the ground and Yan says, “Too busy!”
Wu replies, “You should know there’s one who’s not busy.”
This story is telling us that when we think we are busy, that’s just on the surface. The stress we complain about is conceptual and superficial. We can run around and do plenty of things, but when we know who we are and what is actually going on, we don’t need to be stressed out about anything.
Norman Fischer, Phrases and Spaces
Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday far into the future,
you will gradually, without even noticing it,
live your way into the answer.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Look, and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes. It’s more than bones. It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse. It’s more than the beating of the single heart. It’s praising. It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life — just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe still another
Mary Oliver, To Begin With, the Sweet Grass
After a period of unusually warm weather in Ireland, we now have wind and rain. Change and what doesn’t change….
My real dwelling
Has no pillars
and no roof either.
So the rain cannot soak it
And the wind cannot blow it down!
Ikkyu, 1394–1481, Japanese Zen Buddhist monk and poet
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