Dr. Noel Bormann

Zen Quotes 5

ATTACHMENT

Buddha's doctrine: man suffers because of his craving to possess and keep forever things which are impermanent. Chief among these things is his own person, for this is his means of isolating himself from the rest of life, his castle into which he can retreat and from which he can assert himself against external forces. He believes that his fortified and isolated position is the best means of obtaining happiness; it enables him to fight against change, to strive to keep pleasing things for himself, to shut out suffering and shape circumstances as he wills. In short, it is his means of resisting life. The Buddha taught that all things, including his castle, are essentially impermanent and as soon as man tries to possess them they slip away; this frustration of the desire to possess is the immediate cause of suffering. ALAN WATTS
Decent clothes…a car, but what's it all about? MAICHAEL CAINE in Alfe, Screenplay by BILL NAUGHTON
This one life has no form and is empty by nature. If you become attached by any form, you should reject it. If you see an ego, a soul, a birth, or a death, reject them all. BODHIDHARMA
The love of money is the root of all evil. SAINT PAUL
Our own soul, created wise and thoughtful in the image of God, having refused to know God, has become bestial, senseless and almost insane through delighting in material things. SAINT GREGORY OF SINAI
The feeling of satiety, almost inseparable from large possessions, is a surer cause of misery than ungratified desires. BENJAMIN DISRAELI
One clings to life although there is nothing to be called life; another clings to death although there is nothing to be called death. In reality, there is nothing to be born; consequently, there is nothing to perish. BODHIDHARMA
We can never have enough of that which we really do not want. ERIC HOFFER
Attachment is a manufacturer of illusion and whoever wants reality ought to be detached. SIMONE WEIL
A young girl who became pregnant out of wedlock falsely identified Master Hakuin Ekaku (1685-1768) as the father. When the girl's parents confronted him, Hakuin said only, "Is that so?" When the child was born Hakuin cared for it as lovingly as if it was his own until the girl finally admitted that she had lied. When the girl's parents apologized and begged his forgiveness, Hakuin said, "Is that so?"
We grow weary of those things (and perhaps soonest) which we most desire. SAMUEL BUTLER
Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us. SAMUEL JOHNSON
There must be more to life than having everything! MAURICE SENDAK
If there is to be any peace it will come through being not having. HENRY MILLER
Man's many desires are like the small metal coins he carries about in his pocket. The more he has the more they weigh him down. SATYA SAI BABA
Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you. ANDRÉ GIDE
Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury-to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind. ALBERT EINSTEIN
We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something we are no longer free. KRISHNAMURTI
I saw that nothing was permanent. You don't want to possess anything that is dear to you because you might lose it. YOKO ONO
All worldly pursuits have but the one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow: Acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings, in destruction; meetings, in separations; births, in death. Knowing this, on should, from the very first, renounce acquisition and heaping up, and building, and meeting; and, faithful to the commands of an eminent guru, set about realizing the Truth. MILAREPA

SELF

What is the way of the Buddha? It is to study the self. What is the study of the self? It is to forget oneself. To forget oneself is to enlightened by everything in the world. DOGEN
The urge to transcend Self-conscious selfhood is a principal appetite fo the sould. ALKOUS HUXLEY
The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and sense in which he has attained liberation from the self. ALBERT EINSTEIN
Until we lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves. HENRY MILLER
Master Bankei (1622-1693) was eulogized by a blind man: "Since I cannot see a person's face, I must judge his sincerity by his voice. Usually when I hear someone congratulate a friend on some success, I also hear envy in his voice, and when I hear expressions of condolence, I hear a secret tone of pleasure. Not so with Bankei; when he expressed happiness, his voice was completely happy, and when he expressed sadness, sadness was all I heard."
The more a human being feels himself a self, tries to intensify this self and reach a never attainable perfection, the more drastically he steps out of the center of being, which is no longer now his own center, and the further he removes himself from it. EUGEN HERRIGEL
Self is the root, the tree, and the branches of all the evils of our fallen state. WILLIAM LAW
Forgetfulness of self is remembrance of God. BAYAZID AL-BISTAMI
The search "Who am I"…ends in the annihilation of the illusory "I" and the Self which remains over will be as clear as a gooseberry in the palm of one's hand. SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI
The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self-mastery. REINHOLD NIEBUHR
There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that's your own self. ALDOUS HUXLEY
To reach perfection, we must all pass, one by one, through the death of self-effacement. DAG HAMMARSKJÖLD
Nothing Burns in hell but the self. THEOLOGICA GERMANICA
Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth. ALAN WATTS

TIME

Time is not a line, but a series of now-points. TAISEN DESHIMARU
In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past, which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future. ANDRÉ GIDE
The present moment is a powerful goddess. GOETHE
There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past. GEORGE CARLIN
The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment theat interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. KURT BONNEGUT
There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now. EUGENE O'NEILL
We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent, "here and now" without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank. JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSET
No mind is much employed upon the present; recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments. SAMUEL JOHNSON
The word "now" is like a bomb through the window, and it ticks. ARTHUR MILLER
Tom Seaver: Hey, Yogi, what time is it? Yogi Berra: You mean now?
The passing moment is all that we can be sure of; it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it; the future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Time and space are fragments of the infinite for the use of finite creatures. HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL
Time is the longest distance between two planes. TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Time is the only true purgatory. SAMUEL BUTLER
I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity. IGOR STRAVINSKY
Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. MATTHEW, 6:34
Tomorrow's life is too late. Live today. MARTIAL
Life is all memory except for the one present moment that goes by so quick you can hardly catch it going. TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know. SAINT AUGUSTINE
Time is but the stream I got a-fishing in. THOREAU
Only our concept of Time makes it possible for us to speak of the Day of Judgment by that name; in reality it is a summary court in perpetual session. FRANZ KAFKA
I have realized that the past and the future are real illusions, that they exist only in the present, which is what there is and all that there is. ALAN WATTS
To realize the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom. BERTRAND RUSSELL
We can never finally know. I simply believe that some part of the human Self or Soul is not subject to the laws of space and time. CARL JUNG

LIFE

Life is suffering. BUDDHA
Life just is. You have to flow with it. Give yourself to the moment. Let it happen. JERRY BROWN
If it were possible to talk to the unborn, one could never explain to them how it feels to be alive, for life is washed in the speechless real. JACQUES BARZUN
We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life. JOHN CAGE
Life is a child playing around your feet, a tool you hold firmly in your grip, a bench you sit down upon in the evening, in your garden. JEAN ANOUILH
Life eludes logic. ANDRE GIDE
No concept is a carrier of life. CARL JUNG
Life happens too fast for you to ever think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information. KURT VONNEGUT
The best way to prepare for life is to begin to live. ELBERT HUBBARD
Life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced. KIERKEGAARD
If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life. ALBERT CAMUS
There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life. FEDERICO FELLINI
There is no cure for birth and death, save to enjoy the interval. SANTAYANA
What a miserable thing life is: you're living in clover, only the clover isn't good enough. BERTOLT BRECHT
Great minds struggle to cure diseases so that people may live longer, but only madmen ask why. One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose. ROBERT PIRSIG
Dreams are real while they last. Can we say more of life? HAVELOCK ELLIS

DEATH

A dying man needs to die as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless to resist. STEWART ALSOP
Die before ye die. MUHAMMAD
The Buddhist Sutra of Mindfulness speaks about the mediation on the corpse: meditate on the decomposition of the body, how the body bloats and turns violet, how it is eaten by worms until only bits of blood and flesh still cling to the bones, meditate up to the point where only white bones remain, which in turn are slowly worn away and turn into dust. Meditate like that, knowing that your own body will undergo the same process. Meditate on the corpse until you are calm and at peace, until your mind and heart are light and tranquil and a smile appears on your face. Thus, by overcoming revulsion and fear, life will be seen as infinitely precious, every second of it is worth living. THICH NHAT HANH
Birth is not one act; it is a process. The aim of life is to be fully born, though its tragedy is that most of us die before we are thus born. To live is to be born every minute. Death occurs when birth stops. ERICH FROMM
Look! Look! If you look really hard at things you'll forget you're going to die. MONTGOMERY CLIFT
While alive Be a dead man, Thoroughly dead; and act as you will and all is good. BUNAN
People sleep, and when they die they wake. MUHAMMAD
Those who cling to life die, and those who defy death live. UYESUGI KENSHIN
I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing. ANAIS NIN
The world is impermanent. One should constantly remember death. SRI RAMAKRISHNA
While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die. LEONARDO DA VINCI
It takes so many years to learn that one is dead. T.S. ELIOT
Human beings are afraid of dying. They are always running after something: money, honor, and pleasure. But if you had to die now, what would you want? TAISEN DESHIMARU
We die, and we do not die. SHUNRYU SUZUKI

REALITY

Observe things as they are and don't pay attention to other people. HUANG PO
We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future. MAX PLANCK
There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself. HERMANN HESSE
Reality is where we are from moment to moment. ROBERT LINSSEN
Reality is a staircase going neither up nor down. We don't move, today is today, always today. OCTAVIO PAZ
Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality. ROBERT PIRSIG
What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived at to make life more livable. LOUISE NEVELSON
Reality has no inside, outside, or middle part. BODHIDHARMA
Humankind Cannot bear very much reality. T. S. ELIOT
We take our shape, it is true, within and against that cage of reality bequeathed to us at our birth; and yet it is precisely through our dependence on this reality that we are most endlessly betrayed. JAMES BALDWIN
The man bent over his guitar, A shearsman of sorts. The day was green. They said, "You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are." The man replied, "Things as they are Are changed upon a blue guitar…." WALLACE STEVENS
An independent reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomenon nor to the agencies of observation. NIELS BOHR
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. ALVERT EINSTEIN
Reality is not clearly and immediately apprehended, except by those who have made themselves loving, pure in heart and poor in spirit. ALDOUS HUXLEY
The ancient intuition that all matter, all "reality," is energy, that all phenomena, including time and space, are mere crystallizations of mind, is an idea with which few physicists have quarreled since the theory of relativity first called into question the separate identities of energy and matter. Today most scientists would agree with the ancient Hindus that nothing exists or is destroyed, things merely change shape or form; that matter is insubstantial in origin, a temporary aggregate of he pervasive energy that animates the electron. PETER MATTHIESSEN
I like reality. It tastes of bread. JEAN ANOUILH
There is no way you can use the word "reality" without quotation marks around it. JOSEPH CAMPBELL
We should tackle reality in a slightly joky way, otherwise we miss its point. LAWRENCE DURRELL
Everything factual is, in a sense, theory. The blue of the sky exhibits the basic laws of chromatics. There is no sense in looking for something behind phenomena: they are theory. GOETHE
Any experience of reality is indescribable! R. D. LAING
Cloquet hated reality but realized it was still the only place to get a good steak. WOODY ALLEN