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Overflowing Cup of Tea:
The Zen Master poured his visitor's teacup full, and then kept pouring.
The visitor watched until he could no longer restrain himself.
"It is overfull. No more will go in!"
"Like this cup," the Zen Master said,
"you are full of your own opinions and assumptions.
How can you learn truth until you first empty your cup?"
- Traditional Zen Koan
The True Path is the path on which
there is no coming and no going.
- Traditional Zen Koan
What is the Sound of One Hand Clapping?
- Traditional Zen Koan
The Sweetest Strawberry:
A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger.
He fled, the tiger after him.
Coming to a precipice,
he caught hold of the root of a wild vine
and swung himself over the edge.
The tiger sniffed at him from above.
Trembling, the man looked down to where,
far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him.
Only the vine sustained him.
Two mice, one white and one black,
little by little started to gnaw away the vine.
The man then saw a luscious strawberry near him.
Grasping the vine with one hand,
he plucked the strawberry with the other.
How sweet it tasted.
- Zen Koan
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The Moon Cannot Be Stolen:
A thief entered the little hut of a Zen Master,
but discovered there was nothing to steal.
The Zen Master discovered the thief.
"You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler,
"and you should not return empty-handed.
Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered,
but he took the clothes and slunk away.
The Zen Master sat naked, watching the moon.
"Poor fellow," he mused,
"I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon."
- Traditional Zen Koan
Time to Die:
A Zen teacher had a rare and priceless teacup.
One day, his precocious student accidentally broke the cup.
Hearing the footsteps of his teacher,
the student held the pieces of the cup behind his back.
When the master appeared, he asked: "Why do people have to die?"
"This is natural," explained the teacher.
"Everything has to die and has just so long to live."
The student showed the shattered cup, saying,
"It was time for your cup to die."
- Traditional Zen Koan
When you are alone you are not alone,
you are simply lonely -
and there is a tremendous difference
between loneliness and aloneness.
When you are lonely you are thinking of the other,
you are missing the other.
Loneliness is a negative state.
You are feeling that it would have been
better if the other were there -
your friend, your wife, your mother,
your beloved, your husband.
It would have been good if the other
were there, but the other is not.
Loneliness is absence of the other.
Aloneness is the presence of oneself.
Aloneness is very positive.
It is a presence, overflowing presence.
You are so full of presence
that you can fill the whole universe
with your presence and there is no need for anybody.
- Osho
My Cup Runneth Over - My Life Is Abundant.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Spirit is always waiting to rush into us,
but we are too full of worldly things.
It is like trying to pour fine wine into a cup filled with mud -
the wine is waiting, but the mud must be removed first.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the wedding cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it;
Whenever you're right, shut up.
- Ogden Nash
I wish you a tea and jammies kind of day.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
To a philosopher all news,
as it is called, is gossip,
and they who edit and read it
are old women over their tea.
- Henry David Thoreau
Twinkle, twinkle little bat
How I wonder what you're at!
Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea-tray in the sky.
- Lewis Carroll
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea;
but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
- Abraham Lincoln
A good traveler has no fixed plans,
and is not intent on arriving.
- Lao Tzu
The words of truth are always paradoxical.
- Lao Tzu
To the mind that is still,
the whole universe surrenders.
- Lao Tzu
Fully experience THIS moment -
breathe in, breathe out - nothing more.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
By letting it go it all gets done.
The world is won by those who let it go.
But when you try and try.
The world is beyond the winning.
- Lao Tzu
"Beginner Mind" is a Zen Buddhist term
that describes moving past our assumptions
of the nature of our life,
and really SEEING our surroundings -
especially the people we interact with -
with new eyes.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Be - don't try to become.
Being is enlightenment, becoming is ignorance.
- Osho
"It's not that important,
don't worry about it" is the answer,
now what was the question?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Children are natural Zen masters;
their world is brand new in each and every moment.
- John Bradshaw
Be an Observer of Life.
See the events, feel the emotions,
and recognize the difference.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
He who knows, does not speak.
He who speaks, does not know.
- Lao Tzu
I do not know whether I was then
a man dreaming I was a butterfly,
or whether I am now
a butterfly dreaming I am a man.
- Zhuangzi
Walking is Zen, sitting is Zen.
Then what will be the quality?
Watchfully alert, joyously unmotivated,
centered, loving, flowing, one walks.
And the walking is sauntering.
Loving, alert, watchful, one sits, unmotivated -
not sitting for anything in particular,
just enjoying how beautiful
just sitting doing nothing is,
how relaxing, how restful.
- Osho
In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don't try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.
- Lao Tzu
Can you let go of words and ideas,
attitudes and expectations?
If so, then the Tao will loom into view.
- Lao Tzu
When you become centered, suddenly there is great freedom
because you know you are not the mind and you are not the body.
- Osho
In the midst of movement and chaos,
keep stillness inside of you.
- Deepak Chopra
Practice moment to moment non-judgemental awareness.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
The Tao of the sage is work without effort.
Practice non-action. Work without doing.
- Lao Tzu
When you are eating, eat totally -
chew totally, taste totally, smell totally.
Touch your bread, feel the texture.
Smell the bread, smell the flavor.
Chew it, let it dissolve into your being,
and remain conscious - and you are meditating.
And then meditation is not separate from life.
- Osho
Dwell in stillness.
Observe without reacting and without judging.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
If you really aren't trying to get anywhere else in this moment,
patience takes care of itself.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
Zen says that if you drop knowledge -
and within knowledge everything is included;
your name, your identity, everything,
because this has been given to you by others -
if you drop all that has been given by others,
you will have a totally different quality to your being: innocence.
This will be a crucifixion of the persona, the personality,
and there will be a resurrection of your innocence.
You will become a child again, reborn.
- Osho
Don't choose. Accept life as it is in its totality.
- Osho
Be still and know who you are.
- Kirtana
The moment you start seeing life
as non-serious, a playfulness,
all the burden on your heart disappears.
All the fear of death, of life,
of love - everything disappears.
- Osho
The things of this world exist;
they are; you can't refuse them.
- Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching - Book One #2 - version by Ursula K. Le Guin
Yielding is the way of the Tao.
- Lao Tzu
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
- Henry David Thoreau
The past is no more and the future is not yet.
The only right person is one who lives moment to moment,
whose arrow is directed to the moment,
who is always here and now; wherever he is,
his whole consciousness, his whole being,
is involved in the reality of here and in the reality of now.
- Osho
Maybe life isn't really as complicated
as we make it out to be.
Perhaps a simple child-like attitude would create
a less stressful and happier life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake
is to be continually thrown out of the nest.
- Pema Chodron
In meditation practice, the best way to get somewhere
is to let go of trying to get anywhere at all.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
He who obtains has little.
He who scatters has much.
- Lao Tzu
We take care of the future best by taking care of the present now.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
Breath by breath, let go of fear, expectation, anger,
regret, cravings, frustration, fatigue.
Let go of the need for approval.
- Lama Surya Das
Abandon hope.
- Pema Chodron
Just watch this moment, without trying to change it at all.
What is happening? What do you feel?
What do you see? What do you hear?
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
One cannot have a mind that is empty of all thoughts,
but one can have a mind that is content with
whatever thoughts fill it at the moment.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Freedom from desire leads to inner peace.
- Lao-Tzu
Great acts are made up of small deeds.
- Lao Tzu
The mind constantly chatters.
That chatter winds up being the force
that drives us much of the day in terms of what we do,
what we react to, and how we feel.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
Those who have knowledge, don't predict.
Those who predict, don't have knowledge.
- Lao Tzu
Any change that comes about in your life
will be primarily because of your own efforts.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
First meditate, be blissful,
then much love will happen of its own accord.
Then being with others is beautiful
and being alone is also beautiful.
Then it is simple, too.
You dont depend on others
and you dont make others dependent on you.
- Osho
Dare to be naive.
- Buckminster Fuller
He who knows himself is enlightened.
- Lao Tzu
Breathe and let be.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
If you are absolutely without mind,
just pure consciousness,
time stops completely,
disappears,
leaving no trace behind.
- Osho
I confess that there is nothing to teach:
no religion, no science, no writings
which will lead your mind back to Spirit.
Today I speak this way, tomorrow that,
but always the Path is beyond words and beyond mind.
- Lao Tzu
(paraphrase)
If the mind wants to comprehend reality,
it will have to come out of the past and the future.
But coming out of the past and the future,
it is no longer the mind at all.
Hence the insistence of all the great masters of the world
that the door to reality is no-mind.
- Osho
He who knows that enough is enough
will always have enough.
- Lao Tzu
The whole world is a cyclone.
But once you have found the center, the cyclone disappears.
This nothingness is the ultimate peak of consciousness.
- Osho
Stay at the center
and let all things take their course.
- Lao Tzu
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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