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What is the Sound of One Hand Clapping?
- Traditional Zen Koan
Related topics: Zen
The True Path is the path on which
there is no coming and no going.
- Traditional Zen Koan
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
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
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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
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
A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty,
the contemplation of mystery,
or the search of truth or perfection
is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession
of such days is fatal to human life.
- Lewis Mumford
The primal rhythmic power
and resonant sound of waves on the shore
are like the earth's heartbeat,
and become our connection with the body of nature.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
A system of morality which is based
on relative emotional values
is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception
which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.
- Socrates
True friendship is like sound health;
the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
- Charles Caleb Colton
The sound of 'gentle stillness' after all the thunder
and wind have passed will be the ultimate Word from God.
- Jim Elliot
Visualize your end result as having already been accomplished.
Let the image of your success play on the giant screen
in full color with surround sound -
so real you can smell and taste it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Music is what feelings sound like.
- Anonymous
Creationists make it sound as though a "theory'
is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
- Isaac Asimov
AUM, the most primordial human sound -
and the sound most connected to Spirit,
is pronounced in these three parts:
A (as in mama) - a throat sound
that vibrates in the abdomen - signifies waking.
U (as in who) - a tongue sound
that vibrates in the chest - signifies dreaming.
M (as in mama) - a lip sound
that vibrates in the head - signifies sleeping.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
To the Master's honor all must turn,
each in its track, without a sound,
forever tracing Newton's ground.
- Albert Einstein
Purity of personal life is the one indispensable condition
for building up a sound education.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Overwhelm is not a pleasant condition.
The to-do list overflows,
the deadlines appear imminent and immovable.
There are too many demands upon too little of your time.
Does this sound familiar?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Apathy, indifference, not caring...
It may sound insensitive for me to say, "I don't care,"
but ask first to what I am indifferent.
I choose to be caring, compassionate
and kind toward all people,
and I also choose to be indifferent to gossip,
petty complaints, and idle chatter.
About those, I just don't care.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Don't let one cloud obliterate the whole sky.
- Anais Nin
The greatest mistake you can make in life
is to be continually fearing you will make one.
- Elbert Hubbard
To know yet to think that one does not know is best;
Not to know yet to think that one knows
will lead to difficulty.
- Lao Tzu
The essence of all religions is one.
Only their approaches are different.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences.
No one can eliminate prejudices -
just recognize them.
- Edward R. Murrow
One can never consent to creep when one feels the impulse to soar.
- Helen Keller
I believe that everything happens for a reason.
People change so that you can learn to let go,
things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right,
you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself,
and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.
- Marilyn Monroe
"Just living is not enough," said the butterfly,
"one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower."
- Hans Christian Andersen
We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned,
so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.
- Joseph Campbell
Fear defeats more people than
any other one thing in the world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
- Anais Nin
I am one with the Earth,
with the Water, with the Fire,
with the Air that I breathe,
with all Living Things,
and we are all one with Spirit.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Drop the sword - for there is but one flesh to wound,
and it is the one flesh of all humankind.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
If you wait for opportunities to occur,
you will be one of the crowd.
- Edward de Bono
Majority rule only works if you're also
considering individual rights,
because you can't have five wolves and one sheep
voting on what to have for dinner.
- Larry Flynt
Love one another but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea
between the shores of your souls.
- Khalil Gibran
Try a new perspective on diversity.
Across the country and around the world,
we are all one.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Individually, we are one drop.
Together, we are an ocean.
- Ryunosuke Satoro
When written in Chinese, the word "crisis"
is composed of two characters.
One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.
- John F. Kennedy
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal
with the intent of throwing it at someone else;
you are the one who gets burned.
- The Buddha
One does not discover new lands without consenting
to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
- Andre Gide
No one was ever named "Hero" for following the crowd.
Heroes set their own course.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light,
but by making the darkness conscious.
- Carl Jung
Life was meant to be lived,
and curiosity must be kept alive.
One must never, for whatever reason,
turn his back on life.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
A quotation is a handy thing to have about,
saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)
This day I will marry my friend,
the one I laugh with, live for, dream with, love.
- Anonymous
A man who dares to waste one hour of time
has not discovered the value of life.
- Charles Darwin
When one door closes, another opens.
But often we look so long, so regretfully,
upon the closed door,
that we fail to see the one that is opened for us.
- Helen Keller
Each one prays to God according to his own light.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
My heart bleeds at the death of every one of our gallant men.
- Robert E. Lee
In great contests, each party claims to act
in accordance with the will of God.
Both may be, and one must be wrong.
- Abraham Lincoln
Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back
and realize they were the big things.
- Robert Brault
The shoe that fits one person pinches another;
there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.
- Carl Jung
Everyone thinks of changing the world,
but no one thinks of changing himself.
- Leo Tolstoy
There is no passion to be found playing small -
in settling for a life that is less
than the one you are capable of living.
- Nelson Mandela
To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children,
to leave the world a better place,
to know even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived,
this is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Real excellence and humility are
not incompatible one with the other,
on the contrary they are twin sisters.
- Jean Baptiste Lacordaire
Life does not consist mainly,
or even largely, of facts or happenings.
It consist mainly of the storm of thoughts
that is forever flowing through one's head.
- Mark Twain
Friendship is born at that moment
when one person says to another,
"What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
- C. S. Lewis
Life only appears complicated when one is worrying.
Relax, and life becomes simple again.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl
Take your life in your own hands, and what happens?
A terrible thing: no one to blame.
- Erica Jong
One can not reflect in streaming water.
Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.
- Lao Tzu
Life is a series of experiences,
each one of which makes us bigger,
even though sometimes it is hard to realize this.
- Henry Ford
In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans.
- Khalil Gibran
The art of acceptance is the art of making someone
who has just done you a small favor
wish that he might have done you a greater one.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
All unhappiness comes from either
having less than yesterday,
or from having less than one's neighbor.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains,
but to live in a way that respects
and enhances the freedom of others.
- Nelson Mandela
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.
No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
- Elbert Hubbard
Having a personal opinion is great.
Believing that one's personal opinion is absolute truth
leads to most of the world's troubles.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
NO ONE is really different;
each of us is actually a member of the human race.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
One never notices what has been done;
one can only see what remains to be done.
- Marie Curie
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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