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What is the Sound of One Hand Clapping?
- Traditional Zen Koan
Related topics: Zen
The True Path is the path on which
there is no coming and no going.
- Traditional Zen Koan
Overflowing Cup of Tea:
The Zen Master poured his visitor's teacup full, and then kept pouring.
The visitor watched until he could no longer restrain himself.
"It is overfull. No more will go in!"
"Like this cup," the Zen Master said,
"you are full of your own opinions and assumptions.
How can you learn truth until you first empty your cup?"
- Traditional Zen Koan
The Moon Cannot Be Stolen:
A thief entered the little hut of a Zen Master,
but discovered there was nothing to steal.
The Zen Master discovered the thief.
"You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler,
"and you should not return empty-handed.
Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered,
but he took the clothes and slunk away.
The Zen Master sat naked, watching the moon.
"Poor fellow," he mused,
"I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon."
- Traditional Zen Koan
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Time to Die:
A Zen teacher had a rare and priceless teacup.
One day, his precocious student accidentally broke the cup.
Hearing the footsteps of his teacher,
the student held the pieces of the cup behind his back.
When the master appeared, he asked: "Why do people have to die?"
"This is natural," explained the teacher.
"Everything has to die and has just so long to live."
The student showed the shattered cup, saying,
"It was time for your cup to die."
- Traditional Zen Koan
The Sweetest Strawberry:
A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger.
He fled, the tiger after him.
Coming to a precipice,
he caught hold of the root of a wild vine
and swung himself over the edge.
The tiger sniffed at him from above.
Trembling, the man looked down to where,
far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him.
Only the vine sustained him.
Two mice, one white and one black,
little by little started to gnaw away the vine.
The man then saw a luscious strawberry near him.
Grasping the vine with one hand,
he plucked the strawberry with the other.
How sweet it tasted.
- Zen Koan
True friendship is like sound health;
the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
- Charles Caleb Colton
A system of morality which is based
on relative emotional values
is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception
which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.
- Socrates
The primal rhythmic power
and resonant sound of waves on the shore
are like the earth's heartbeat,
and become our connection with the body of nature.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The sound of 'gentle stillness' after all the thunder
and wind have passed will be the ultimate Word from God.
- Jim Elliot
A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty,
the contemplation of mystery,
or the search of truth or perfection
is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession
of such days is fatal to human life.
- Lewis Mumford
Creationists make it sound as though a "theory'
is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
- Isaac Asimov
Music is what feelings sound like.
- Anonymous
Visualize your end result as having already been accomplished.
Let the image of your success play on the giant screen
in full color with surround sound -
so real you can smell and taste it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Purity of personal life is the one indispensable condition
for building up a sound education.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Apathy, indifference, not caring...
It may sound insensitive for me to say, "I don't care,"
but ask first to what I am indifferent.
I choose to be caring, compassionate
and kind toward all people,
and I also choose to be indifferent to gossip,
petty complaints, and idle chatter.
About those, I just don't care.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
AUM, the most primordial human sound -
and the sound most connected to Spirit,
is pronounced in these three parts:
A (as in mama) - a throat sound
that vibrates in the abdomen - signifies waking.
U (as in who) - a tongue sound
that vibrates in the chest - signifies dreaming.
M (as in mama) - a lip sound
that vibrates in the head - signifies sleeping.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
To the Master's honor all must turn,
each in its track, without a sound,
forever tracing Newton's ground.
- Albert Einstein
Overwhelm is not a pleasant condition.
The to-do list overflows,
the deadlines appear imminent and immovable.
There are too many demands upon too little of your time.
Does this sound familiar?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship,
and it is far the best ending for one.
- Oscar Wilde
Friendship is born at that moment
when one person says to another,
"What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
- C. S. Lewis
In true friendship, one can express
anything and everything without feeling ashamed
or afraid of being rejected.
- Aparna Chatterjee
The only thing to do is to hug one's friend tight and do one's job.
- Edith Wharton
The easiest kind of friendship for me
is with ten thousand people.
The hardest is with one.
- Joan Baez
A true friend is one who believes in you
when you have ceased to believe in yourself.
- Anonymous
Sometimes new love comes between old friends.
Sometimes the best love was the one that was always there.
- Anonymous
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
- Anais Nin
A friend is one before whom I can think aloud.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.
- Euripides
Friendship is one mind in two bodies.
- Mencius
The only reward of virtue is virtue;
the only way to have a friend is to be one.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
There's a big difference between a handout and a helping hand.
One's charity, the other's friendship.
- Little Joe' Cartwright in Bonanza - Rain from Heaven
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship
is to understand and to be understood.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
One measure of friendship consists
not in the number of things friends can discuss,
but in the number of things they need no longer mention.
- Clifton Fadiman
Friendship is not possible between two women
one of whom is very well dressed.
- Laurie Colwin
Friendship with one's self is all important,
because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
Friends... they cherish one another's hopes.
They are kind to one another's dreams.
- Henry David Thoreau
Love one another but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea
between the shores of your souls.
- Khalil Gibran
A true friend is the one who
walks in when others walk out.
- Walter Winchell
Friendship without self-interest
is one of the rare and beautiful things in life.
- James Francis Byrnes
One is taught by experience to put a premium
on those few people who can appreciate you for what you are.
- Gail Godwin
Everyone has a "best friend" during each stage of life,
but only a precious few have the same one.
- Anonymous
A friend is one who walks in when others walk out
- Walter Winchell
A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway.
- Jerome Cummings
A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.
- Abraham Lincoln
A real friend is one who walks in
when the rest of the world walks out.
- Walter Winchell
Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious,
one should preserve it.
- Anais Nin
Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons
to promote the good and happiness of one another.
- Eustace Budgell
Friendship is a thing most necessary to life,
since without friends no one would choose to live,
though possessed of all other advantages.
- Aristotle
It is one of the blessings of old friends
that you can afford to be stupid with them.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We can never replace a friend.
When a man is fortunate enough to have several,
he finds they are all different.
No one has a double in friendship.
- Johann Schiller
A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.
- Charles Darwin
Remember, we all stumble, every one of us.
That's why it's a comfort to go hand in hand.
- Emily Kimbrough
My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.
- Henry Ford
The greatest compliment that was ever paid me
was when one asked me what I thought,
and attended to my answer.
- Henry David Thoreau
Life does not consist mainly,
or even largely, of facts or happenings.
It consist mainly of the storm of thoughts
that is forever flowing through one's head.
- Mark Twain
How paramount the future is to the present
when one is surrounded by children.
- Charles Darwin
The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand,
nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship;
it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one
when he discovers that someone else believes in him
and is willing to trust him with his friendship.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light,
but by making the darkness conscious.
- Carl Jung
Each one prays to God according to his own light.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
It is easy enough to be pleasant
When life flows by like a song,
But the man worth while is the one who will smile
When everything goes dead wrong.
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox
No one is in control of your happiness but you;
therefore, you have the power to change anything
about yourself or your life that you want to change.
- Barbara De Angelis
Real excellence and humility are
not incompatible one with the other,
on the contrary they are twin sisters.
- Jean Baptiste Lacordaire
If you have only one smile in you,
give it to the people you love.
Don't be surly at home,
then go out in the street
and start grinning good morning
at total strangers.
- Maya Angelou
God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.
- William Shakespeare
No one is free who is not master of himself.
- Epictetus
NO ONE is really different;
each of us is actually a member of the human race.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
There is no neutrality.
There is only greater or lesser
awareness of one's bias.
- Phyllis Rose
One of the advantages of being disorganized is that
one is always having surprising discoveries.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)
The best relationship is one in which
your love for each other
exceeds your need for each other.
- Anonymous
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