Zen Koan, parable, saying, quip etc...

[wagthedog]

If you have a wise koan or saying that made a difference in your life share it.

"If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."

[Nahemah]

I have lots of sayings,but not Zen or Koan.

I am very fond of Sartre:

"Hell is other people."


That was epiphanic for me,along with this one too:

"Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear."


There are many more that chime with me,by various people,some well known and others not so much.

I also particularly like this Sufi story:

The Lost Key

Mulla Nasruddin was searching for something in his garden. When his neighbour asked him what he was searching, he replied that he was looking for his house key.

Wanting to help him, his neighbour joined him asking : ''Do you remember where you dropped it?''

Mulla answered: 'Of course I do, in my house.'

'Why are you looking here?', asked his neighbour confused.

Mulla Nasrudin replied: 'Because there is much more light here than in my house.'

[wagthedog]

Well this got a few hits Nahemah... and you had a few quotes. Do you guys have a quote of the day thread? Might go down a treat.


"If you meet the Buddha on the road, Kill him"

"Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it is dark"

a couple from zen (not sure who)

and a few from Oscar Wilde (people like him lightened me up I was a serious kid)

"All art is quite useless." Oscar Wilde

"Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much." O.W.

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction. O.W.

I also loved this one

"per ardua ad astra" ---> To the stars through adversity (struggle).... Again don't know who but it encapsulates the essence of the pathei mathos.

[Nahemah]

Do you guys have a quote of the day thread? Might go down a treat.

We don't as far as I 'm aware,but I agree we should. [thumbup]

"per ardua ad astra" ---> To the stars through adversity (struggle).... Again don't know who but it encapsulates the essence of the pathei mathos.

ah,I knew I liked you,[grin]

Also, Mr.Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wilde is just my cuppa tea too....

"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all."

"Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to."

Believe me,this last one resonates strongly with me,I take my hedonism seriously,sacramentally so,in fact. [greensmile]

The importance of being Ernest and The Picture of Dorian Gray are my faves of his.

I do hope other folks will join in too,I find the quotes folks favour very interesting,fascinating even. [cool]

[Nahemah]

"Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much." O.W.

Yey! I 've found this a most useful metaphor,publically at least,lol.

Oops.Showing myself a little..oh my. [crazy]

[dRider]

We can make our lives easy, or we can make them difficult. The amount of work involved is the same.
--Carlos Castaneda

Came upon this one recently; while it's not a hard thing to understand, what he's saying, it's still one of those things that seems deceptively profound. And I most certainly haven't even begun to understand it yet.

He who is drowning is not troubled by the rain.
--Chinese Proverb

The little things don't matter during the big, and possibly...if you drown yourself in something wholeheartedly, suddenly the little rainstorms don't seem so big.

[Nahemah]

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.

Bertrand Russell

[Nogah]

I think Joshu's verse is my favourite Koan...simply put it is the exclamation 'Mu!' meaning nothing as neither positive nor negative -1 +1 = 0 as it were.

The story goes that one of Joshu's disciples (he was a progressed monk/priest) asked 'Does a [wagthe]dog have buddha/dharma nature?' To which Joshu gave the simple reply 'Mu!' For days the acolyte asked the same questions and received the same reply, days became weeks, weeks became months 'Mu!' 'Mu!' 'Mu!' 'Mu!'.

Eventually when the disciple asked the question one final time Joshu gave his famous verse...

Disciple - 'Does a dog have buddha nature?'

Joshu - 'Mu! That is the imperative. Once you start to think 'It has, it has not' you may as well be dead.'

[magus33]

words are limiting by nature.
theyre just tools, that should be used and discarded as soon as they fulfill their purpose.

[Rin]

Not quite sure if this is what you had in mind, but these two sections in particular of lyrics from a favorite song of mine made a tremendous impact on me, and they're words I try to live by daily.

Scroobius Pip - Waiting for the Beat to Kick In

"I won't attempt tell you how to love or be loved,
Because you get a different genie each time that lantern is rubbed,
But I will offer you advice on dealing with life,
Its ups and its downs,
Its troubles and its strifes,
Now I'm sure you've had times when you've felt down or angry,
Wanted to lash out, punch a wall and be manly,
But the question I pose now will offer you a plan B,
And maybe some peace and quiet for your friends and family,
How hard is it to decide to be in a good mood,
And then just be.. in.. a good mood?
That's all I have to say because it's a straight up fact,
You control your emotions it's as simple as that."


"You don't achieve anything by letting the past rule within you,
Getting all pent up and angry about stuff just eats away inside you,
What's that other line of yours..
'If you can't forgive and forget,
How's this,
Forget forgivin' and just accept that that's it',
See that's how it's gotta be.
Then you can fall in love, get on with your life and be free"

[Clockwork Ghost]

"I don't need no arms around me. And I dont need no drugs to calm me. I have seen the writing on the wall. Don't think I need anything at all" - Pink Floyd: 'Another Brick In The Wall'

[manonthepath]

"To me every hour of every day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle." Walt Whitmann

"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious." Oscar Wilde

"Be the change you want to see in the world.: Gandhi

"Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us." Henrik Tikannen

"Your grandchildren will likely find it incredible, even sinful, that you burned up a gallon of gas to buy a pack of cigerettes." Paul MacReady

"We do not inherit the earth from our snscestors. We borrow it from our children." Huron proverb

"I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more if they had known they were slaves." Harriet Tubman

"Any damn fool can make a rule and any damn fool can follow it." Henry David Thorough

"In the practice of tolerance one's enemy is the best teacher." Dalai Lama

[manonthepath]

"How terrible it is to be an educated fool." Manonthepath

[ronald]

"The mind has but one ability, and that is to complete the picture that you put inside of it." Abraham Maslow

[Asmus]

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water.
The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.
Although its light is wide and great,
The moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide.
The whole moon and the entire sky
Are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.
-Dogen

While on a journey, Lao Tzu found an old skull. With sorrow, he questioned and lamented the end of all things. When he finished speaking he dragged the skull over and, using it for a pillow, lay down to sleep.
In the night, the skull came to his dreams and said “You are a fool to rejoice in the entanglements of life.” Lao Tzu couldn’t believe this and asked “If I could return you to your life you would want that, wouldn’t you?”
Stunned by Lao Tzu’s foolishness, the skull said “How do you know it is bad to be dead?”

-Attributed to Lao Tzu/Chang Tzu

Has a dog Buddha-nature?
This is the most serious question of all.
If you say yes or no,
You lose your own Buddha-nature.

[Zeon1985]

I know this isn't exactly the kind of saying you are looking for (or the droids), but I feel it's worth posting because of it's relevance in a lot of issues that haunt us and mess with our abilities:

Give me the strength to change the things I can,
The serenity to accept the things I can't,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Keep the flaming to a minimum please. [wink]

Zeon

[Vashta]

I actually really like that prayer

[Moth]

One that I (amusingly) got out of a Christmas cracker a billion years ago:

"To think you can, creates the force that can."

And one of my own:

"You can always tell how stupid someone is, by how stupid THEY think YOU are."

[Nahemah]

You have your way,I have my way.
As for the right way,the only way and the correct way;These do not exist.

Neitzsche.

[Uman]

“There is no such thing as truth. The only thing that is actually there is your logically ascertained premise, which you call truth.”
―U. G. Krishnamurti

[Stale1]

Hogen, a Chinese Zen teacher, lived alone in a small temple in the country. One day four traveling monks appeared and asked if they might make a fire in his yard to warm themselves.

While they were building the fire, Hogen heard them arguing about subjectivity and objectivity. He joined them and said: "There is a big stone. Do you consider it to be inside or outside your mind?"

One of the monks replied: "From the Buddhist viewpoint everything is an objectification of mind, so I would say that the stone is inside my mind."

"Your head must feel very heavy," observed Hogen, "if you are carrying around a stone like that in your mind."

[The Cove]

Wrote on my wall - it stays so I do not mind it. (A saying in it's self)

We are just children getting old.

[Frater ALV]

"Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." The last words of Hassan i Sabbah, Old Man of the Mountain.

William S Burroughs - Cities of the Red Night

[Jack-o-diamonds]

"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects."

-Herman Melville in Moby Dick.

i'm.... a little obsessed with that book... >_ > i'm fairly sure ahab is me, except as a man and in a fictional nightmare-world.

let me just... yeah i'm just gonna quote the whole thing:

“Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian once did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that to this hour I bear the scar; I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor reverence wilt thou be kind; and e’en for hate thou canst but kill; and all are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee. I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the midst of the personified impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a point at best; whenceso’er I came; whereso’er I go; yet while I earthly live, the queenly personality lives in me, and feels her royal rights. But war is pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy lowest form of love, and I will kneel and kiss thee; but at thy highest, come as mere supernal power; and though thou launchest navies of full-freighted worlds, there’s that in here that still remains indifferent. Oh, thou clear spirit, of thy fire thou madest me, and like a true child of fire, I breathe it back to thee.”

and that's not even the best part.

[Henochius Simon]

shit happens, flowers grow