Quotes About Contemplation

shikan-taza (just doing zazen)

Keep your mouth shut and look directly at impermanence!

1. Ask yourself, "What is the worst that can possibly happen?" 2. Prepare to accept it if you have to. 3. Then calmly proceed to improve on the worst.

And yet not a dream, but a mighty reality- a glimpse of the higher life, the broader possibilities of humanity, which is granted to the man who, amid the rush and roar of living, pauses four short years to learn what living means

i had spent four years propped on the front porch of the fraternity house, bemused and dreaming, watching the sun shine through the spanish moss, lost in the mystery of finding myself alive at such a time and place.

Have you noticed that the narrower the view the more you can see? For the first time I understand how old ladies can sit on their porches for years.

The second I left my old life's cowpath, I discovered I didn't need a drink. It became possible to stand still in the dark under the oaks, hands at my sides, and watch and wait.

One can sniff the ozone from the pine trees, visit the local bars, eat crawfish, and drink Dixie beer and feel as good as it is possible to feel in this awfully interesting century. And now and then, drive across the lake to New Orleans, still an entrancing city, eat trout amandine at Galatoire's, drive home to my pleasant, uninteresting place, try to figure out how the world got into such a fix, shrug, take a drink, and listen to the frogs tune up.

As a Bolling in Feliciana Parish, I became accustomed to sitting on the porch in the dark and talking of the size of the universe and the treachery of men; as a Smith on the Gulf Coast I have become accustomed to eating crabs and drinking beer under a hundred and fifty watt bulb - and one is as pleasant a way as the other in passing a summer night.

He is a moviegoer, though of course he does not go to movies.

He is a moviegoer, though of course he does not go to the movies.

In the middle of a sentence it will come over me: yes, beyond a doubt this is death.

I covered his thumbprint with my thumb and considered for the first time that Papa might have been more than just old pictures - old, repeated stories.

I wasn't crazy about this idea, but it seemed less complicated than suicide. All I'd have to do was sit in the dark and breathe.

Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun.... there are millions of suns left, You shall no longer take things at second or third hand.... nor look through the eyes of the dead.... nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons — the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night.

Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?

I lean and loaf at my ease... observing a spear of summer grass.

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am, Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary, Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest, Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next, Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.

I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen, And accrue what I hear into myself...and let sounds contribute towards me.

Why should I pray? Why should I venerate and be ceremonious?

Or may-be one who is puzzled at me. As if I were not puzzled at myself!