The Source of our Problems

"When we look for the source of all the problems that confront human life we usually blame everything but the root cause: our lack of spiritual discipline and realization. Particularly in this degenerate age, the world atmosphere is so very negative and the conditions around us conducive to little but evil karma and meaningless distractions, that not to have the protection of spiritual knowledge is to leave ourselves totally defenseless against the negative mind."

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment

The World of the Mind

On the question of Mind, the Lankavatara (Sutra) has the following to say: ' ...the ignorant and the simple minded, not knowing that the world is what is seen of Mind itself, cling to the multitudinousness of external objects, cling to the notions of being and non-being, oneness and otherness, bothness and not-bothness, existence and non-existence, eternity and non-eternity.'"

-Thomas Hoover, Zen Experience

Enemies Everywhere

"...if you see someone or think of someone as an enemy, you are certain to cause them to become one.  And if you see enemies everywhere, your life will be filled with conflict.  Conversely, if you treat everyone well, you can create conditions that allow for a very peaceful mind."

-Masayuki Shimabukuro and Carl E. Long, Samurai Swordsmanship: The Batto, Kenjutsu and Tameshigiri of Eishin-Ryu

The Way of Nature

"The way of nature is inherently benign and works for our benefit when we understand and accommodate ourselves to it. Therefore the purpose of all ethics, all spiritual practice, is to understand the way of nature and work with it."

-Aidan Rankin, Shinto: A Celebration of Life

The Good that We are Born With

"A great trouble with us is that we do not believe in half the good that we are born with."

-Kaiten Nukariya, The Religion of the Samurai - A Study of Zen Philosophy and Discipline in China and Japan

The Synthesis of Zen

"Whereas Buddhism believes it would be best if we could simply ignore the world, the source of our psychic pain, the Taoists wanted nothing so much as to have complete union with this same world. Buddhism teaches union with the Void, while Taoism teaches union with the Tao. At first they seem opposite directions. But the synthesis of these doctrines appeared in Zen, which taught that the oneness of the Void, wherein all reality is subsumed, could be understood as an encompassing whole or continuum, as in the Tao."

-Thomas Hoover, Zen Experience

Winning 100% of the Time

"In order to achieve victory you must place yourself in your opponent’s skin. If you don’t understand yourself, you will lose one-hundred percent of the time. If you understand yourself, you will win fifty percent of the time. If you understand yourself and your opponent, you will win one-hundred percent of the time."

-Tsutomu Oshima

Buddha and the Flower

"There is a legend the Buddha was once handed a flower and asked to preach on the law. The story says he received the blossom without a sound and silently wheeled it in his hand. Then amid the hush his most perceptive follower, Kashyapa, suddenly burst into a smile … and thus was born the wordless wisdom of Zen."

-Thomas Hoover, Zen Experience

A Model for the World

"Know the white, yet keep to the black;
Be a model for the world.
If you are a model for the world,
The Tao inside you will strengthen,
And you will return whole to your eternal beginning."

-Daode Jing, Chapter 28, McDonald Translation

Our Cherished Beliefs

"From a Taoist point of view, it is our cherished beliefs - that we exist as separate beings, that we can exercise a willful control over all situations, and that our role is to conquer our environment - that lead to a state of disharmony and imbalance."

-Ted Kardash, Taoism - The Wu-Wei Principle

As Above, So Below

"As we men live and act, so do our arteries; so does blood; so do corpuscles. As cells and protoplasm live and act, so do elements, molecules, and atoms. As elements and atoms live and act, so do clouds; so does the earth; so does the ocean, the Milky Way, and the Solar System. What is this life which pervades the grandest as well as the minutest works of Nature, and which may fitly be said ‘greater than the greatest and smaller than the smallest?’ It cannot be defined. It cannot be subjected to exact analysis. But it is directly experienced and recognized within us, just as the beauty of the rose is to be perceived and enjoyed, but not reduced to exact analysis."

-Kaiten Nukariya, The Religion of the Samurai: A Study of Zen Philosophy and Discipline in China and Japan

Mastery in Every Action

"A man who has attained mastery of an art reveals it in his every action."

-Samurai Maxim