Quotes from Thomas Hoover

I was at the famous Shiva temple of Brihadishwari in Tanjore,

When we act on our spontaneous judgment, we are almost always better off.

Being natural means to exist spontaneously without having to take any action.

We are unhappy, he explained, because we are slaves to our desires. Extinguish desire and suffering goes with it. If people could be taught that the physical or phenomenal world is illusion, then they would cease their attachment to it, thereby finding release from their self-destructive mental bondage.

Chuang Tzu was invited to the court to serve as a minister, an invitation he declined with a typical story: An ox is selected for a festival and fattened up for several years, living the life of wealth and indulgence—until the day he is led away for sacrifice. At that reckoning what would he give to return to the simple life, where there was poverty but also freedom? In

The master Wen-yu summed it up when he answered a demand for the First Principle of Ch'an with, "If words could tell you, it would become the Second Principle.

A good cook changes his knife once a year because he cuts, while a mediocre cook has to change his every month because he hacks. I've had this knife of mine for nineteen years and have cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the edge is as if it were fresh from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints. The blade of the knife has no thickness. That which has no thickness has plenty of room to pass through these spaces. Therefore, after nineteen years, my blade is as sharp as ever.

Whereas the logical mode of thought can only manipulate the world view of given paradigm, intuition can inspire genuine creativity, since it is not shackled by the nagging analytical mind, which often serves only to intimidate imaginative thought.

Being natural means to exist spontaneously without having to take any action. . . . By taking no action is not meant folding one's arms and closing one's mouth. If we simply let everything act by itself, it will be contented with its nature and destiny. (12)

One of the major insights of Zen is that the world should be perceived directly, not as an array of embodied names.

Zen would have our perception of the world, indeed our very thoughts, be nonverbal.

Only in formal meditation can there be the real beginning of understanding.

There's no escaping the Taoist adage, "Those who speak do not know, those who know do not speak.

Words can point the way, but the path must be traveled in silence.

revised them to suit Zen purposes.

Quietistic meditation is easier, naturally, but a person who practices it will turn out to be just as insecure and petty as someone not enlightened at all. What is equally important, "leisure-time" meditation that separates our spiritual life from our activities is merely hiding from reality. You cannot come home from the job and suddenly turn on a meditation experience.

He didn't realize it, but with those words he had played directly into Sabri Ramirez's hands. The scenario was now a lock. When Jack Mulhoney turned back to his radio, he only heard static. 7:47 p.m. Vance watched as the frigate got off a warning tracer, but to no effect. The Hind ignored it, as a stream of 57mm rockets from under the chopper's stubby starboard wing flared down, while the radar-slaved machine gun beneath the nose opened fire.

The radio crackled alive with a Mayday.

According to Ch'an (and Zen), understanding comes only by ignoring the intellect and heeding the instincts, the intuition.

It is easier to be tranquil about existence when you recognize the pointlessness of solemnity.

Symmetrical art is a closed form, perfect in itself and frozen in completeness; asymmetrical art invites the observer in, to expand his imagination and to become part of the process of creation.

All that was worth handing on died with them; the rest, they put into their books.8

It's funny, but after you break up a family, no matter how dysfunctional, you start repressing the bad memories. But then something comes along to remind you all over again.

The koan describes three monks watching a banner flutter in the breeze. One monk observes, "The banner is moving," but the second insists, "The wind is moving.