Dogen Zenji Quotes

I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I am.

Our prayers may be an index of how small and self-centered our world is.

You have to take each game as it comes and not get ahead of yourself.

It's not the end of the world if I lose. I try to keep it all in perspective.

I don't take it very seriously. You shouldn't let your success get to your head or failure get to your heart. This is most commonly said. But people don't really practise it. I don't see myself as a celebrity; it has not sunk in. I just see myself as someone doing a nine-to-six job like a techie.

People tend to take themselves too seriously.

Look up at the stars, not down at your feet.

I'm in a world so wide. It makes me feel small sometimes.

The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in correcting its mistakes. Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics, biology, or chemistry — is not even a ”subject " — but a moral imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and humility to learning.

Hyesims poems: transformative as walking high granite mountains by moonlight, with fragrant herbs underfoot and a thermos of clear tea in the backpack. Their bedrock is thusness, their images beauty is pellucid and new, their view without limit. The shelf of essential Zen poets for American readers grows larger with this immediately indispensable collection.

Mountains, according to the angle of view, the season, the time of day, the beholder's frame of mind, or any one thing, can effectively change their appearance. Thus, it is essential to recognize that we can never know more than one side, one small aspect of a mountain.

You must ascend a mountain to learn your relation to matter, and so to your own body, for it is at home there, though you are not.

Original details are very ordinary, except to the mind that sees extraordinariness. it's not that we need to go to the Hopi mesas to see greatness; we need to view what we already have in a different way.

It's strange how deserts turn us into believers. I believe in walking in a landscape of mirages, because you learn humility. I believe in living in a land of little water because life is drawn together. And I believe in the gathering of bones as a testament to spirits that have moved on. If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self.

Awareness is observation without choice, condemnation, or justification. Awareness is silent observation from which there arises understanding without the experiencer and the experienced. In this awareness, which is passive, the problem or the cause is given an opportunity to unfold itself and so give its full significance. In awareness there is no end in view to be gained, and there is no becoming, the 'me' and the 'mine' not being given the continuity.

Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves.

I looked back at the summit of the mountain, which seemed but a cubit high in comparison with the height of human contemplation, were in not too often merged in the corruptions of the earth.

You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder. It is good to remember that the planet is carrying you.

We're all - all of us - a minute away from dying. If you're aware of that, life becomes a little more precious. Also, you have a slightly different outlook. It's not so much "gimme, gimme."

The difference between a mountain and a molehill is your perspective.

I'd forgotten not all victories are about saving the universe.

I had seen the great, but I had not seen the small.

A great mind is one that can forget or look beyond itself.

If you don't climb the mountain, you can't see the view

We learned a lot about the Moon, but what we really learned was about the Earth. The fact that just from the distance of the Moon you can put your thumb up and you can hide the Earth behind your thumb. Everything that you've ever known, your loved ones, your business, the problems of the Earth itself-all behind your thumb. And how insignificant we really all are, but then how fortunate we are to have this body and to be able to enjoy loving here amongst the beauty of the Earth itself.