It is true that we are called to create a better world. But we are first of all called to a more immediate and exalted task: that of creating our own lives.
I have learned that one cannot truly know hope unless he has found out how like despair hope is.
Grains of error planted innocently in a well-kept greenhouse can become giant poisonous trees.
Nevertheless, the liturgy of Ash Wednesday is not focussed on the sinfulness of the penitent but on the mercy of God. The question of sinfulness is raised precisely because this is a day of mercy, and the just do not need a savior.
For our duties and our needs, in all the fundamental things for which we were created, come down in practice to the same thing.
Today will never come again.
The degradation of the sense of symbol in modern society is one of its many signs of spiritual decay.
The things I thought were so important – because of the effort I put into them – have turned out to be of small value. And the things I never thought about, the things I was never able to either to measure or to expect, were the things that mattered.
The whole aim of Zen is not to make foolproof statements about experience, but to come to direct grips with reality without the mediation of logical verbalizing.
If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.
For the ones who are called saints by human opinion on earth may very well be devils, and their light may very well be darkness.
Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.
I am earth, earth My heart’s love Bursts with hay and flowers. I am a lake of blue air In which my own appointed place Field and valley Stand reflected.
For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.
Be still: There is no longer any need of comment. It was a lucky wind That blew away his halo with his cares, A lucky sea that drowned his reputation.
Whose silence are you?
Wheels of fire, cosmic, rich, full-bodied honest victories over desperation.
Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.
October is a fine and dangerous season in America. a wonderful time to begin anything at all. You go to college, and every course in the catalogue looks wonderful.
For the birds there is not a time that they tell, but the point vierge between darkness and light, between being and nonbeing. You can tell yourself the time by their waking, if you are experienced. But that is your folly, not theirs.