Each night, I gaze upon a pond,
A Zen body sitting beside a moon.
Nothing is really there, and yet
It is all so clear and bright.
I cannot describe it.
If you would know the empty mind,
your own mind must be as clear and bright
as this full moon upon the water.
- Chiao Jan (785-895)

Those who attain the Tao
Are masters of themselves.
The universe is
Dissolved for them.
Throw them in the company
Of the noisy and the dirty,
And they will be like a lotus flower:
Growing from muddy water,
Touched by it, yet unstained.
- Lao Tzu

Don’t seek favor
Don’t clamber after fame.
Giving up and getting are empty
Both the same
This floating life
Is petals falling
Emptied past the eye
Serving the state
Is a dream
Serving yourself
Is the same.
- Ch’en Ts’ao-an

@rookie54 said
Those who attain the Tao
Are masters of themselves.
The universe is
Dissolved for them.
Throw them in the company
Of the noisy and the dirty,
And they will be like a lotus flower:
Growing from muddy water,
Touched by it, yet unstained.
- Lao Tzu

@hakima said
Look at 13 Nov ‘18...the words are nearly identical, yet the attributed authors different.

Simply interesting.

@ponderable said
Great minds think alike ?

Quiet and secluded,
the temple's brushwood gate closed.
I stay away from the noises of the world.
How I pity the corrupted
manners of the times!
Why should we be sorry to see flowers fade?
Don't be attached to the worldly
ties any longer; so deplorable
is the way that lies before us.
Nobody knows me living
in this remote part of the land.
The setting sun slants
on my pine-framed window.

- Uich'on (1055-1101)

@Ponderable

Great minds think alike ?

@sonship said
@Ponderable

Great minds think alike ?

According to some of the Regurgitation Police around here, minds that think alike must always have one site the other as the source. Otherwise plagiarism may be being committed.

Ask Ghost-of-Duke about details.

Swell after swell of pinewind
Comb like waves at sea:
Beat after beat of heavenly music
Strummed on cloudy strings.
Midnight, Tao folk
Purify their hearing
And rise alone to burn incense:
Moon full
Just overhead.

- Hsu Yun

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius
-- and a lot of courage --
to move in the opposite direction.
-E. F. Schumacher

---
a question for one who knows,
when cutting and pasting from one internet website to another,
as in this very case right here,
should one add quotation marks to this quote???

thank you for reading and participating...

In Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis describes an encounter between his principal character and an old man busily at work planting a tree. “What is it you are doing?” Zorba asks. The old man replies: “You can see very well what I’m doing, my son, I’m planting a tree.” “But why plant a tree,” Zorba asks, “if you won’t be able to see it bear fruit?” And the old man answers: “I, my son, live as though I were never going to die.” The response brings a faint smile to Zorba’s lips and, as he walks away, he exclaims with a note of irony: “How strange—I live as though I were going to die tomorrow!”
-From the book Daily Reflections
Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.

---
living a life as if one would never die,
and,
living a life as if one will die tomorrow,

are the same philosophy...

@rookie54 said
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius
-- and a lot of courage --
to move in the opposite direction.
-E. F. Schumacher

---
a question for one who knows,
when cutting and pasting from one internet website to another,
as in this very case right here,
should one add quotation marks to this quote???

thank you for reading and participating...

The warblers too
And the blossoms hidden away
In Plum Blossom valley;
Yet, in the scene
I feel the voice of Spring.

- Rengetsu (1791-1875)

I know my dog is dreaming when his legs grind like broken gears
and he barks like an embryo.

I know my cat is dreaming when she purrs with half open eyes
in which I see cities on fire, ancient towers collapsing into the sea.

I do not know when I am dreaming.
Perhaps I am the butterfly Chung T'zu mistook for himself

in a dream brought on by eating under-cooked rice noodles
in the hut of an old woman whose body was a crysalis

from which the New Moon would emerge like a hungry moth
to wake him up.

I once thought I was a Taoist.
I once thought I was a Christian.

Now I know my religion is what bees do to honeysuckle and alfalfa.
My religion is the gold I drip on stone-cut buckwheat groats.

My religion is the syncretism of raspberries, walnuts, and cream.
My religion is the way children and their grandparents

behave around food when their parents escape to the kitchen
to argue in secret desperation about the cost of staying alive.

My religion is your arms around me, mine around you,
and the willingness to remain like this and do nothing

while our hearts murmur to each other about how
hard and simple it is to ask for love.
—Fred LaMotte