Such people do not realize that by alleviating the suffering of those before your eyes, practicing benevolence and living rightly, our good influence will extend far beyond. –Yoshida Kenkō, Essays in Idleness, translated by Meredith McKinney…
It is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, a book spread before you, and commune with someone from the past whom you have never met. —Yoshida Kenkō, Essays in Idleness, translated by…
By refusing to distract himself from the main task, by jealously guarding his energies for what really mattered, [Arthur] Waley was able to produce his vast corpus of work. Title is a key theme in…
Even if you lack all faith, simply to seat yourself before an image, hold a rosary and take up a sutra book is to perform a virtuous act, however perfunctory, even seated on your meditation…
It’s terribly depressing to discover some quite worthless person blithely reciting a poem that you yourself had particularly liked and carefully copied down in a notebook. –Sei Shōnagon, The Pillow Book, translated by Meredith McKinney
Do I contradict myself?Very well then I contradict myself,(I am large, I contain multitudes.) –Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 53 [Soen Nakagawa] had many faces: he was a simple monk, a “crazy wisdom” Zen master,…
Do not waste time on nonessentials. –Miyamoto Musashi, Nine Articles, in John Stevens, Budo Secrets: Teachings of the Martial Arts Masters
Surely there can be nothing to distinguish us from the beasts, if we simply devote ourselves to greed and never turn our hearts to the Buddhist truth.—Yoshida Kenkō, Essays in Idleness What is a man,If…
My instructor asked questions such as: What had I done, in detail, from the time I had awakened until the time I arrived at the session, a period of one and a half hour? ……
The highest way of living for those who take the tonsure is to aim to lack nothing while owning nothing. —Yoshida Kenkô, Essays in Idleness, translated by Meredith McKinney If you wish to possess everythingYou must…