More Quotes
that have Changed my Life

For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other. At the input end they develop ganglia of nerves called brains, with eyes and ears, so they can more easily scrounge around for things to swallow. As and when they get enough to eat, they use up their surplus energy by wiggling in complicated patterns, making all sorts of noises by blowing air in and out of the input hole, and gathering together in groups to fight with other groups. In time, the groups grow such and abundance of attached appliances that they are hardly recognizeable as as mere tubes, and they manage to do this in a staggering array of forms. There is a vague rule not to eat tubes of your own form, but in general there is serious competition as to who is going to be the top type of tube. All this seems marvelously futile, and yet, when you begin to think about it, it begins to be more marvelous than futile. Indeed, it seems extremely odd.
- Alan W. Watts - from: The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.
I too realize that the less I preach the more likely I am to be heard.

- Alan W. Watts - from: The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.
I'd rather have him inside the tent pissing out, then outside the tent pissing in.
- Lyndon B. Johnson
This grasped, all's dust - The sermon for today. Lands, seas. Awakened, You walk the earth alone.
- Seigensai
Success is never certain, failure is never final.
- Jeff MckEever - Micro Age
If you don't know where you're going, you're liable to end up somewhere else.
- Lawrence J. Peters

From Ron Fitch

If you don't know where you are going, you won't know where you are when you get there.

If you don't know where you're going, you're liable to end up there.

WHO You Are, is Who you are Today!
WHAT You are is Who you've been.

It's OK to Breathe!

Be Here Now! (But don't get STUCK in it)

Experience is what you get when you don't like what you want.

Decisions don't Exact a price; Choices Do!

If there's no risk, it ain't worth it!

When you pit Logic against Emotions, Logic usually loses.

Backwards always seems backwards to Backwards.

When you don't understand, it gets Personal.  When you DO Understand, it's not Personal anymore.

From John F. Kennedy:

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived and dishonest - but the myth - persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.

One day Chuang-Tzu and a friend were walking along a riverbank. "How delightfully the fishes are enjoying themselves in the water, Chuang-Tzu exclaimed. "You are not a fish, how do you know whether or not the fishes are enjoying themselves?" "You are not me", Chuang-Tzu replied. "How do you know that I do not know that the fishes are enjoying themselves?"
- Taoist Mondo
The less you bet, the more you lose when you win.
- Unknown

From Unknown:

The less you bet, the more you lose when you win.

Great Minds Focus on Ideas... 
Average Minds pay attention to Events.... 
Weak Minds are driven by Drama.

There are Two Secrets to Success:

1. Don't tell ANYONE Everything you know

2.

If you have to ask what Jazz is, you'll never know.
- Louis Armstrong
Passion unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destination.
- Kahil Gibran

From Yang Wan-Li

I drink alone in my study, huddled close to the brazier.
The wine is fresh - just strained this evening.
The candle is short - left over from last night.
I chew on a piece of sugar cabe as big as a rafter and eat tangerines sweeter than honey.
When the wine takes effect, a poem comes to me;
I grope for my brush, but I'm too high to write it down.
---------------------------

Don't read books!
Don't chant poems!
When you read books, your eyeballs whither away, leaving the bare sockets.
When you chant poems your heart leaks out slowly with each word.
People say reading books is enjoyable.
People say chanting poems is fun.
But if your lips constantly make a sound
    like an insect chirping in autumn,
you will only turn into a haggard old man.
And even if you don't turn into a haggard old man,
    it is annoying for others to have to hear you.
It is much better
    to close your eyes, sit in your study,
     lower the curtains, sweep the floor, burn incense.
It's beautiful to listen to the wind, listen to the rain,
    take a walk when you feel energetic,
     and when you're tired go to sleep.

When we ask for advice we are usually looking for an accomplice.
- Marquis de la Grange
As I grew up I became increasingly interested in philosophy, or which [his family] profoundly disapproved. Everytime the subject came up they repeated with unfailing regularity, "What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind." After some fifty or sixty repititions, this remark ceased to amuse me.

- Bertrand Russell
The nature of God is a circle of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.
- Empedocles
Everyday people are straying away from church and going back to God.
- Lenny Bruce
I asked the boy beneath the pines...
He said, "The Master's gone alone
herb-gathering somewhere on the mount,
cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown".
- Chia Tao
The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.

- Meister Eckhart
Computers are useless - they can only give you answers.

- Pablo Picasso
A monk asked Yueh-shan, "What does one think of while sitting?"
"One thinks of not-thinking", the Master replied.
"How does one think of not-thinking?"
"Without thinking", the Master said.

- Zen Mondo
If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
- Zen Master Dogen
The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there.
- Yasutani Roshi
The map is not the territory.
- Alfred Korzybski
The poet must work with brush and paper,but this is not what makes the poem.
A man does not go in search of a poem -
the poem comes in search of him.

- Yang Wan Li
In truth, a satisfying orgasm is a spiritual realization more than a technical accomplishment.

- Thadeus Golas - The Lazy Man's guide to Enlightment
Just before she died, Gertrude Stein asked: "What is the answer?" - No answer came. She laughed asked: "In that case what is the question?"; after which, she died.
One sees great things from the valley, only small things from the peak.
- G.K. Chesterton
In an utter Emptiness anything can take place.
- John Cage
God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through.
- Paul Valery
Truth knocks at our door and we say "Go'way! I'm looking for the truth!", and the truth goes away - Puzzled.

- Robert Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence
I'm astounded by people who want to "know" the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.
- Woody Allen
How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.
- Coco Chanel
Life is what happens when you're making other plans.
- John Lennon
Chop wood, carry water - a Zen saying
The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.
- Carl Jung
As regards the quietude of the sage, he is not quiet because quietness is said to be good. He is quiet because the multitude of things cannot disturb his quietude. When water is still, one's beard and eyebrows are reflected in it. A skilled carpenter uses it in a level to obtain a measurement. If still water is so clear how much more are the mental faculties!
The mind of a sage is the mirror of heaven and earth in which all things are reflected.
- Chuang-Tzu
The Zen Master said, "Who binds you?" The seeker of liberation said "No one binds me." The Master asked, "Then why seek liberation?"
- Zen Mondo
How can you think and hit at the same time?
- Yogi Berra
The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
- G. K. Chesterton
Don't read the sutras - practice meditation.
Don't take up the broom - practice meditation.
Don't plant tea seeds - practice meditation.
- Ikkyu
Those who arrive at the end of the journey are not those who began.
- T.S. Elliot
Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.
- G. K. Chesterton
Suzuki said "my Zen is very ordinary". I say, ordinary Zen can produce Extra-ordinary results,until you attempt to define results; at which time it is no longer ordinary.
- Ronald Allen
What's th' Fucking Hurry?
- generic
It is never too late to give up your prejudices.
- Henry David Thoreau
He who confronts the paradoxical exposes himself to reality.
- Friedrich Durrenmatt
Two mirrors facing each other. There is no image in between.
- Zen Proverb
When a person is confused, he sees east as west.
When he is enlightened, west itself is east.
-Ta-Hui
I can no longer tell the dream from reality.
Into what world shall I awake, from this bewildering dream?
- Akazome Emon
Knock,
And He'll open the door.
Vanish,
And He'll make you shine like the sun.
Fall,
And He'll raise you to the heavens.
Become nothing,
And He'll turn you into everything!
- Jelaluddin Rumi
1.Get enough food to eat, and eat it.
2.Find a place to sleep where it is quiet, and sleep there.
3.Reduce intellectual and emotional noise until you arrive
at the silence of yourself, and listen to it.
4.
- Richard Brautigan
If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.
- Lin Yu-T'ang
He who knows how to shave the razor, will know how to erase the eraser.
- Henri Michaux
Every moment is nothing without end.
- Octavio Paz
Talking about Zen all the time is like looking for fish tracks in a dry riverbed.
- Wu-Tzu
We are all deep in a hell each moment of which is a miracle.
- E.M. Cioran
Genuine beginnings begin within us,
even when they are brought to our attention
by external opportunities.
- William Bridges
All Buddhas and ordinary people are just one mind.
This mind is beyond all measurements, names, oppositions:
this very being is it; as soon as you stir your mind you turn away from it.
- Huang-Po
We dance around in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
- Robert Frost
The priest Sung-yuan said, "Why does the enlightened man not stand on his feet and explain himself?" And he said, "It is not with the tongue that you speak.
- Zen Koan
If you scramble about in search of inner peace, you will lose your inner peace. - Lao-Tzu
The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught the trap is forgotten.
The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits.
When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten.
The purpose of words is to convey ideas.
When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten.
Where can I find a man who has forgotten words?
He is the one I would like to talk to.
- Chuang-Tzu
No umbrella, getting soaked,
I'll just use the rain as my raincoat.
- Daito
Between God and Me there is no "Between".
- Meister Eckhart
Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish.
- Hermann Hesse
When you are deluded and full of doubt, even a thousand books of scripture are not enough.
When you have realized understanding, even one word is too much.
- Fen-Yang
Abandoning things is superior, pursuing things is inferior.
- Yen-T'ou
In the end, everything is a gag.
- Charlie Chaplin
I've opened shop this time
on the banks of the Kamo.
Customers, sitting idly,
Forget host and guest.
They drink a cup of tea,
Their long sleep is over;
Awake they realize
They're the same as before.
- Baisao
If I meet a hundred-year-old man and I have something to teach him, I will teach; if I meet an eight-year-old boy and he has something to teach me, I will learn.
- Chao-Chou
Act without doing; work without effort.
- Tao The Ching
Draw bamboos for ten years, become a bamboo, then forget all about bamboos when you are drawing.
- Georges Duthuit
Stop, stop. Do not speak. The ultimate truth is not even to think.
- Buddha
Zen is the unsymbolization of the world.
R. H. Blyth
Say something about a thing and already you are off the mark.
- Nan-Yueh Huai-Jang
The prayer of the man is not perfect until he no longer recognizes himself or the fact that that he is praying.
- St. Anthony
Just before she died, Gertrude Stein asked: "What is the answer?" No answer came.
She laughed and said: "In that case what is the question?" Then she died.
A monk asked Yueh-shan, "What does one think of while sitting?"
"One thinks of not-thinking", the Master replied.
"How does one think of not-thinking?" the monk asked?
"Without thinking", the Master said.
Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that.
- Charlotte Joko Beck
Just as elephants don't travel on rabbit paths, great enlightenment isn't a matter of details.
Yung-Chia
Among the great things which are to be found among us, the Being of Nothingness is the greatest.
- Leonard Da Vinci
If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.
- Wu-Men
We accept graceful falling
Of Mountain cherry blossoms,
But it is much gharder for us
To fall away from our own
Attachment to the world.
- Rengetsu
Everything leads us to believe that there exists a certain point of the intelligence at which life and death, the real and the imaginary, the past and the future... cease to be perceived as opposites.
- Andre' Breton
TODAY
(Word carved on a stone on John Ruskin's desk)
At any given moment, I open my eyes and exist.
And before that, during all eternity, what was there? Nothing.
- Ugo Betti
Nothing is more real than nothing.
- Samuel Beckett
No one belongs to me; I belong to no one.
There is no "I" or "mine"; all is blissful aloneless.
- The Mahabharata
The Meaning of Life is to see.
-Hui-Neng
I discovered the secret of the sea in meditation upon the dew drop.
Kahil Gibran
In rain during a dark night, enter that darkness.
- Shiva
If enlightenment is not where you are standing, where will you look?
- Zen Saying
Life was to be a search, or nothing! But it was the fear that it was nothing that drove me forward. Every encounter was an encounter with myself.
John Le Carre'
What lies behind us and what lies before us
are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
If any man thinks he slays, and if another thinks he is slain, neither knows the ways of truth. The Eternal in man cannot kill: the Eternal in man cannot die.
- Bhagavad Gita
Siddhartha had often heard all this before, all these numerous voices in the river, but today they sounded different... They all belonged to each other: the lament of those who yearn, the laughter of the wise, the cry of indignation and the groan of dying...and all the voices, all the goals, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world.
- Hermann Hesse
When one sees Eternity in things that pass away and Infinity in Finite things,
then one has Pure Knowledge.
- Bhagavad Gita

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More Quotes that have Changed my Life

More Quotes
that have Changed my Life