
“Die while you’re alive and be absolutely dead. Then do whatever you want: it’s all good.” Bunan
“Die while you’re alive and be absolutely dead. Then do whatever you want: it’s all good.” Bunan
“Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.” Basho
“Zen is the way of splitting the self again and again, until there is nothing left.” Frederick Lenz
“It is not enough to accept boredom, you must embrace it. It is only when you have completely embraced it that you can go beyond it.” Albert Low
“Zen is looking at things with the eye of God, that is, becoming the thing’s eyes so that it looks at itself with our eyes.” Reginald Horace Blyth
“No matter how bad a state of mind you may get into, if you keep strong and hold out, eventually the floating clouds must vanish and the withering wind must cease.” Al Paca
“What is perfect? From the Zen mind, perfection is not being there.” Frederick Lenz
“Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.” Basho
“It’s not that I hear the birds, it’s just hearing the birds.” Charlotte Joko Beck
My good friend Alena Shminke who is also a therapist was trying to cheer me up this morning and wrote: “I think animals are basically happy because they just live in their bodies and that’s all. And btw, they don’t read Nietzsche.”
Since she lives in Estonia I thought it might be easier to talk to an animal face to face and see what he had to say. I met a woman who was feeding chickens and goats cookies and lasagna, which I thought was completely normal.
Al wasn’t interested, possibly because he was on a Keto diet so he came up to chat. Not knowing exactly what to say I asked: what is enlightenment? And he replied, when hungry, eat. When tired, sleep.
Knowing that this was the truth, I thanked him and asked, then what? He told me to come back at the golden hour, use a wider aperture, low ISO and get the color right which pissed me off. So I shot him.
“Focus your mind on one thing, absorb the old examples, study the actions of the masters – penetrate deeply into a single form of practice.” Dogen
“Horses are divine mirrors, reflecting back our inner emotional truth.” Allan J. Hamilton, Zen Mind, Zen Horse