True words aren’t fancy,
Charming words aren’t true.
Good people don’t argue,
Proselytizers aren’t good.
The wise aren’t academic,
Scholars aren’t wise.
The foolish understand the words,
The wise understand the sense.
The wise don’t accumulate, hoard or grasp;
The more they do for others,
The more they fulfill themselves.
The more they give to others,
The more they have.
This way of life leaves no trace,
Sharpens without cutting,
Benefits without causing harm.
The wise act without effort,
Accomplish great things
Without striving or struggle.
“There is no path to happiness: happiness is the path.”
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“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
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“When Lao Tan and Yin Hsi heard of people who considered accumulation as deficiency, they were delighted.”
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“Sages do not need authority to be noble, do not need wealth to be rich, and do not need power to be strong. Peaceful and empty, they are not subject to outside influences; they fly freely with evolution.”
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“I did not so much gain the knowledge of things by the words, as words by the experience I had of things.”
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“We are not disturbed by what happens to us, but by our thoughts about what happens to us.”
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“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
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“The more you seek the Buddha and the Dharma, the further away they become.”
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“The last line summarizes the entire 5,000 words of the previous eighty verses. It doesn’t focus on action or inaction but simply on action that doesn’t involve struggle.”
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“You have always been one with the Buddha, so do not pretend you can attain to this oneness by various practices.”
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“The problem is not enjoyment; the problem is attachment.”
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“The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.”
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“Whenever there is help, there must be harm. But when Heaven helps, it doesn’t harm, because it helps without helping. Action is the start of struggle. Wherever there is action, there must be struggle. But when sages act, they don’t struggle, because they act without acting.”
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“A free mind is one which is untroubled and unfettered by anything, which has not bound its best part to any particular manner of being or devotion and which does not seek its own interest in anything.”
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“Art lies in conceiving and designing, not in the actual execution.”
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“At the beginning of this book, Lao-tzu says that Tao can’t be put into words. But are its 5,000-odd characters not words? Lao-tzu waits until the last verse to explain this. He tells us that though the Tao itself includes no words, by means of words it can be revealed – but only by words that come from the heart.”
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“Study and learn the teachings but become more and more non-sectarian. Follow and learn from teachers but leave them and combine all into one. Meditate and do spiritual practices but don’ think they improve anything.”
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“If you are concerned with the welfare of the future, it is most important to become more and more non-sectarian.”
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“Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.”
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“I don’t know where I am going, but I am on my way.”
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“It is ever true that he who does nothing for others, does nothing for himself.”
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“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is—infinite.”
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“It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.”
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“the necessary ingredients of happiness: simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and above all, a clear conscience.”
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“Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.”
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“Your thoughts are not your experiences, they are an echo and after-effect of your experiences: as when your room trembles when a carriage goes past.”
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“Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.”
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“We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.”
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“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”
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“The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.”
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“What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.”
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“Every means is an obstacle. Only where all means have disintegrated encounters occur.”
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“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”
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“By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, when in fact we live steeped in its burning layers.”
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“I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.”
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“Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.”
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“You can often change your circumstances by changing your attitude.”
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“The journey, not the destination matters...”
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“Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be. Unhappily we make the task exceedingly difficult for ourselves.”
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“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
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“What matters most are the simple pleasures so abundant that we can all enjoy them...Happiness doesn't lie in the objects we gather around us. To find it, all we need to do is open our eyes.”
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“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
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“When we ask what Buddha nature is, it vanishes; but when we just practice zazen, we have full understanding of it… When you give up trying to understand it, true understanding is always there.”
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“The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.”
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“This last poem is self-reflexive, wrapping it all up tight in the first verse, then opening out again to praise the undestructive, uncompetitive generosity of the spirit that walks on the Way.”
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“And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.”
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“Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.”
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“It isn't the things that happen to us in our lives that cause us to suffer, it's how we relate to the things that happen to us that causes us to suffer.”
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“We already have everything we need. There is no need for self-improvement… all the time our warmth and brilliance are right here. This is who we really are. We are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake.”
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“I think it’s a question of being in contact with reality, then we don’t have to crank up something else.”
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“At the beginning and at the end of the Taoteching, Lao-tzu reminds us not to become attached to the words. Let the words go. Have a cup of tea.”
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