A falling leaf returns to it’s roots.

Realization, neither general nor particular,
is effort without desire.
Clear water all the way to the bottom;
a fish swims like a fish.
Vast sky transparent throughout;
a bird flies like a bird.
Dogen “The Point of Zazen”

Your mind knows only some things.
Your inner voice, your instinct, knows everything.
If you listen to what you know instinctively,
it will always lead you down the right path.
Henry Winkler

Crisp autumn leaves
Rustle softly
Then blow away.
Japanese haiku

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.
John Wesley

The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflaction;
The water has no mind to receive their image.
Zenrin

Little flower – but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
Tennyson

To know you don’t know is best.
Not to know you don’t know is a flaw.
Therefore, the Sage’s not being flawed
Stems from his recognizing a flaw as a flaw.
Therefore he is flawless.
-Tao Te Ching

After a few years of meditation practice we can even learn how to occasionally ignore ourselves. And what relief that can be!
Wes Nisker

”Do not fear failure or crave success,
the reward is not in the result but in the doing”.
Wilson Greatbatch – 06/09/1919–27/09/2011
inventor of the internal heart pacemaker

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today.
I can choose which it shall be.
Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet.
I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.
Groucho Marx

Peace originates with the flow of things –
it’s heart is like the movement of the wind and waves.
The Way is like the veins that circulate blood through our body,
following the natural flow of the life force.
If you are seperated in the slightest from that devine essence,
you are far off the path.
Morihei Uyeshiba

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

All Heaven and Earth are still,
though not in sleep,
but breathless,
as we grow when feeling most.
Lord Byron

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path to a clearer light,
and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.
Our life is a long and arduous quest after truth.
Mahatma Gandi

You watch what you eat, you exercise,
you have a bit of fun.
You keep going forward. Don’t stop.
Do what makes you happy.
Don’t look at the clouds of tomorrow through the sunshine of today.
Mick Jagger

Be the change you want to see in the world.
Mahatma Gandhi

How people treat you is their Karma;
How you react is yours.
Wayne Dyer

The Great Way has no gate;
there are a thousand paths to it.
If you pass through the barrier,
you walk the universe alone.
Wu Men

Curiosity is an exercise in caution.
J. K. Rowling

What is the meaning of Lieh energy?
It revolves like a spinning disc.
If something is thrown onto it,
it will immediately be cast more than ten feet away.
Have you not seen a whirlpool form in a swift flowing stream?
The waves roll in spiraling currents.
If a falling leaf drops into it,
it will suddenly sink from sight
The Song of Lieh by T’an Meng-hsienas

The knell of the bells at the Gion Temple echoes the impermanence of all things.
The colour of the flowers on it’s double-trunked tree
Reveals the truth that to flourish is to fall.
He who is proud is not so for long.
Like a passing dream on a night in spring.
He who is brave is finally destroyed.
To be no more that dust before the wind.
The Heike (13th century)

Our life in this world – to what shall I compare it?
It’s like an echo resounding through the mountains and off the empty sky.
Ryokan

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear … And when it is gone past I will turn the inner eye to see it’s path.
Where the fear is gone there will be nothing
Only I will remain.
Frank Herbert

One instant is eternity;
eternity is the now.
When you see through this one instant,
you see through the one who sees.
Wu Men

The first rule is to keep a untroubled spirit.
The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.
Marcus Aurelius

When you stand with two feet on the ground you will always keep your balance.
The Tao Te Ching

That which is beautiful has no need of anything;
not more than law, not more than truth,
not more than benevolence or modesty.
Marcus Aurelius

Knowing the world fears what is too pure,
The wisest man prizes and stores light.
Li Po

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile,
but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.
Thich Nhat Hhan

You’ve go to dance like there’s nobody watching,
love like you’ll never be hurt,
sing like there’s nobody listening,
and live like it’s heaven on earth.
William W. Purkey

Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world,
for each thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.
Rene Descartes

A man should look for what is, not for what he thinks should be.
Albert Einstein

You cannot describe it, you cannot picture it.
You cannot admire it, you cannot sense it.
It is your true self, it has nowhere to hide.
Mumon Ekai

Take yourself to the mountain,
Let your spirit fly.
Take yourself to the stream,
Let your imagination swim.
Take yourself to the meadow,
Lay amongst the flowers,
Let your heart dream.
Bill Hailey

Like the little stream
Making it’s way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.
Ryodan (1758 – 1831)

New Years first snow – ah -
Just barely enough to tilt
the daffodil.
Slender so slender
It’s stalk bends under dew -
Little yellow flower.
Basho (1644 – 1694)

Courage is a resistance to fear,
mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
Mark Twain

The flower invites the butterfly with no-mind;
The butterfly visits the flower with no-mind.
The flower opens, the butterfly comes;
The butterfly come, the flower opens.
I don’t know others,
Others don’t know me.
By not knowing we follow natures course.
Ryokan

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.
Mark Twain

Spring comes with it’s flowers,
Autumn with it’s moon,
Summer with it’s breezes,
Winter with it’s snow;
When useless things don’t stick in the mind,
That is your best season.
Mumon Ekai

The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts.
Marcus Aurelius

When the mind is at peace,
the world to is at peace.
Nothing real, nothing absent.
Not holding on to reality,
not getting stuck in the void.
You are neither holy or wise,
just an ordinary fellow who has completed his work.
Ho Un

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
Oscar Wilde

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
Ralph W Emerson

I dare not say I have reached any state of achievment.
I’m still learning, for learning is boundless.
Bruce Lee

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared with what lies within us.
Ralph W Emerson

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul.
Mark

Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.
Euripides

Sorrows are the best educator.
A man can see further through a tear than a telescope.
Bruce Lee

Yes I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
Oscar Wilde

Adopt the pace of nature:
her secret is patience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tell me and I forget
Show me and I remember
Involve me and I understand.
Lao Tzu

Perseverance furthers.
I Ching

It is not because things are dfficult that we do not dare;
it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.
Seneca (4 BC – 63 AD)

Difficulty at the beginning works supreme success.
I Ching

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, untill another heart whispers back.
Those who wish to sing always find a song.
At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.
Plato (427 BC – 347 BC)

If the root be in confusion, nothing will be governed.
Confucius

For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.
Plato

A consciousness of wrong doing is the first step to salvation.
You have to catch yourself doing it before you can correct it.
Seneca

A falling leaf moves with effortless grace.
Hailey

Show me a man of violence who came to a good end and I will take him for my teacher.
Lao tzu

That without substance can enter where there is no room.
Lao tzu

By the time i was old enough to know that my father was right, i had a son who thought i was wrong.
Henry Winkler

At the centre of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.
Lao Tzu (c. 604 – 531 BC)

Being loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
Lao Tzu

I make my home in the mountains

You ask why I live
alone in the mountain forest

and I smile and am silent
until even my soul grows quiet:

it lives in the other world,
one that no one owns.

The peach trees blossom.
The water continues to flow.
Li Po (701 – 762)

Seclude the mind, not the movements,
remain living in the world of man.
Lack a tree? Plant a sapling.
Without a mountain? Look at a picture.
Living amidst clamor I am not flustered;
true meaning is found in this.
Ch’iao-jan (734 – c. 792)

Those who know do not speak;
Those who speak do not know.
Block the passages,
Shut the doors,
Let all sharpness be blunted,
All tangles untied,
All glare tempered.
All dust smoothed.
This is called the mysterious levelling.
He who has achieved it cannot either be drawn
into friendship or repelled,
Cannot be benefited, cannot be harmed,
Cannot either be raised or humbled,
And for that very reason is highest of all creatures
under heaven.
Lao Tzu

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Lao Tzu

Be soft in your practice. Think of the method as a fine silvery
stream, not a raging waterfall. Follow the stream, have faith
in its course. It will go its own way, meandering here, trickling
there. It will find the grooves, the cracks, the crevices. Just follow
it. Never let it out of your sight. It will take you.
Sheng-yen (b. 1931)