Zen Proverb

Before enlightnment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightnment, chop wood, carry water.

Learning Zen is a phenomenon of gold & dung. Before you learn it, it’s like gold; after you learn it, it’s like dung.

To be calm is the highest achievement of the self.

Inner surrender leads to the highest truth.

When you get there, there isn’t any there there.

What was never lost can never be found.

When an ordinary man attains knowledge, he is a sage; when a sage attains understanding, he is an ordinary man.

The instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.

It’s not about approving or liking, but just being able to allow the world to be the way it is without resenting, hating, or judging it.

You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.

Inner surrender leads to the highest truth.

Before enlightnment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightnment, chop wood, carry water.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion – several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven.

Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?

Our God is a forgiving God.

The Kingdom of God is Within You,

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

Only a spiritual being has awareness.

To a brave man, good and bad luck are like his left and right hand. He uses both.