Quotes About Journey

Mountains like these and travelers in the mountains and events that happen to them here are found not only in Zen literature but in the tales of every major religion. The allegory of

The pattern was looking for something to attach to and couldn't find anything

Stuckness. That's what I want to talk about today. Back

The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

Vivere solo in funzione di una meta è sciocco. È sui fianchi delle montagne che si sviluppa la vita.

Robert M. Pirsig

I feel happy to be here, and still a little sad to be here too. Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive.

De hellingen van de berg dragen het leven, niet de top.

He's here but he's not here. He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then it will be "here." What he's looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn't want that because it is all around him. Every step's an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant. That seems to be Chris's problem now.

It's happening, just from the warming of the sun, the road and green praire farmland and buffeting wind coming together. And soon it is nothing but beautiful warmth and wind and speed and sun down the empty road. The last chills of the morning are thawed by the warm air. Wind and more sun and more smooth road.

I add, almost to myself, "You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself.

These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow.

You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.

Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive.

La vera motocicletta a cui state lavorando è una moto che si chiama voi stessi. La macchina che sembra là fuori e la persona che sembra qui dentro non sono separate. Crescono insieme verso la Qualità o insieme se ne allontanano.

I walk up the long main street in the gathering dusk and feel the presence of the mountains even though we talk about other things. I feel happy to be here, and still a little sad to be here too. Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive.

So we move down the empty road. I don't want to own these prairies, or photograph them, or change them, or even stop or even keep going. We are just moving down the empty road.

There's no greater adventure on earth than simply living the life of generosity and abundance that is available to all of God's people—but that so few ever dare to live. It is a journey of reward. It is the blessed life.

Der Zug der Zeit ist ein Zug, der seine Schienen vor sich her rollt. Der Fluß der Zeit ist ein Fluß, der seine Ufer mitführt.

All that night he followed bends of the black road jeweled by starlight until the wan light of the dawn touched the east with red and the pastures turned green.

For the truth is a terrible thing. You dabble your foot in it and it is nothing. But you walk a little farther and you feel it pull you like an undertow or a whirlpool. First there is the slow pull so steady and gradual you scarcely notice it, then the acceleration, then the dizzy whirl and plunge into darkness. For there is a blackness of truth, too. They say it is a terrible thing to fall into the Grace of God. I am prepared to believe that.

I have known time and distance, but not why I am here.

They say the drowning man relives his life as he drowns. Well, I was not drowning in water, but I was drowning in West. I drowned westward through the hot brass days and black velvet nights. It took me seventy-eight hours to drown. For my body to sink down to the very bottom of West and lie in the motionless ooze of History, naked on a hotel bed in Long Beach, California.