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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
What is the Sound of One Hand Clapping?
- Traditional Zen Koan
The True Path is the path on which
there is no coming and no going.
- 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
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
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 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
I wish you a tea and jammies kind of day.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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
To the mind that is still,
the whole universe surrenders.
- Lao Tzu
The words of truth are always paradoxical.
- Lao Tzu
A good traveler has no fixed plans,
and is not intent on arriving.
- Lao Tzu
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
"It's not that important,
don't worry about it" is the answer,
now what was the question?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Fully experience THIS moment -
breathe in, breathe out - nothing more.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
NECESSITY and URGENCY are twin poisons of our rattlesnake minds.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
No more walls.
- Anais Nin
Dare to be naive.
- Buckminster Fuller
Besides the noble art of getting things done,
there is the noble art of leaving things undone.
The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.
- Lin Yutang
The wise man looks into space,
and does not regard the small as too little,
nor the great as too much;
for he knows that there is no limit to dimensions.
- Lao Tzu
The water in a vessel is sparkling;
the water in the sea is dark.
The small truth has words which are clear;
the great truth has great silence.
- Rabindranath Tagore
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
Those who have knowledge, don't predict.
Those who predict, don't have knowledge.
- Lao Tzu
He who knows that enough is enough
will always have enough.
- Lao Tzu
The wise man looks back into the past,
and does not grieve over what is far off,
nor rejoice over what is near;
for he knows that time is without end.
- Lao Tzu
He who knows himself is enlightened.
- Lao Tzu
He who knows, does not speak.
He who speaks, does not know.
- Lao Tzu
Be - don't try to become.
Being is enlightenment, becoming is ignorance.
- Osho
The Tao abides in non-action,
Yet nothing is left undone.
- Lao Tzu
The Tao of the sage is work without effort.
Practice non-action. Work without doing.
- Lao Tzu
Children are natural Zen masters;
their world is brand new in each and every moment.
- John Bradshaw
Maybe So, Maybe Not.
- Ancient Taoist Proverb
Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity,
reduce selfishness, have few desires.
- Lao Tzu
Great acts are made up of small deeds.
- Lao Tzu
Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.
- Lao Tzu
To manage your mind,
know that there is nothing,
and then relinquish all attachment to nothingness.
- Lao Tzu
Wherever you go, there you are.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
Don't choose. Accept life as it is in its totality.
- Osho
Be still and know who you are.
- Kirtana
He who obtains has little.
He who scatters has much.
- Lao Tzu
Being wakeful in each and every moment of your life is meditation.
The simplest definition of meditation is:
when seeing, just see; when hearing, just hear.
- Josh Baran
When you become centered, suddenly there is great freedom
because you know you are not the mind and you are not the body.
- Osho
Give yourself permission to allow this moment to be exactly as it is,
and allow yourself to be exactly as you are.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
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
As we cultivate peace and happiness in ourselves,
we also nourish peace and happiness in those we love.
- Thich Nhat Hanh
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)
Stay at the center
and let all things take their course.
- Lao Tzu
Practice moment to moment non-judgemental awareness.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
Dwell in stillness.
Observe without reacting and without judging.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
If you are absolutely without mind,
just pure consciousness,
time stops completely,
disappears,
leaving no trace behind.
- Osho
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
In the midst of movement and chaos,
keep stillness inside of you.
- Deepak Chopra
Abandon hope.
- Pema Chodron
"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
Simply put, mindfulness is moment-to-moment non-judgmental awareness.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
Any change that comes about in your life
will be primarily because of your own efforts.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
Meditation is neither shutting things out nor off.
It is seeing things clearly,
and deliberately positioning yourself differently in relationship to them.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
At the deepest level, there is no giver, no gift, and no recipient...
only the universe rearranging itself.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way:
on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.
- 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
As your silence grows; your friendliness, your love grows;
your life becomes a moment-to-moment dance, a joy, a celebration.
- Osho
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
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
Mindfulness means being awake.
It means being aware of what you are doing.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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