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Category: zen
Quotes of Category: zen
TOP TAGS :racesgraduateapologizingawakeningnosehumanitarianillnesspassed

  1. Chuck Palahniuk _ Choke

    To Mr. Jones, she said, imagine you're looking up at a blue sky, and imagine a tiny airplane skywriting the letter Z. Then let the wind erase the letter. Then imagine the plane writing the letter Y. Let the wind erase it. Then the letter X. Erase it. Then the letter W. Let the wind erase it.
    book-quotemindzensubconscious

  2. Michael Cunningham _ The Hours

    Here, then, is the last moment of true perception, a man fishing in a red jacket and a cloudy sky reflected on opaque water.
    book-quotezenperception

  3. Robert M. Pirsig _ Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals

    But the ones who go posing as moralists are the worst. Cost-free morals. Full of great ways for others to improve without any expense to themselves. There's an ego thing in there, too. They use the morals to make someone else look inferior and that way look better themselves. It doesn't matter what the moral code is -- religious morals, political morals, racist morals, capitalist morals, feminist morals, hippie morals -- they're all the same. The moral codes change but the meanness and the egotism stay the same.
    book-quotephilosophypsychologyzen

  4. Robert M. Pirsig _ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle

    The title of this Chautauqua is "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," not "Zen and the Art of Mountain Climbing," and there are no motorcycles on the tops of mountains, and in my opinion very little Zen. Zen is the "spirit of the valley," not the mountaintop. The only Zen you fin on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.
    book-quotemountainszenmountain-climbing

  5. Robert M. Pirsig _ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle

    Newton invented a new form of reason. He expanded reason to handle infinitesimal changes and I think what is needed now is a similar expansion of reason to handle technological ugliness. The trouble is that the expansion has to be made at the roots, not at the branches, and that's what makes it hard to see.
    book-quotezenstrike-at-the-root

  6. Robert M. Pirsig _ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle

    To doubt the literal meaning of the words of Jesus or Moses incurs hostility from most people, but it's just a fact that if Jesus or Moses were to appear today, unidentified, with the same message he spoke many years ago, his mental stability would be challenged. This isn't because what Jesus or Moses said was untrue or because modern society is in error but simply because the route they chose to reveal to others has lost relevance and comprehensibility. "Heaven above" fades from meaning when space-age consciousness asks, Where is "above"? But the fact that the old routes have tended, because of language rigidity, to lose their everyday meaning and become almost closed doesn't mean that the mountain is no longer there. It's there and will be there as long as consciousness exists.
    book-quotemeaningphilosophywords

  7. Robert M. Pirsig _ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle

    She was strangely unaware that she could look and see freshly for herself, as she wrote, without primary regard for what had been said before.
    book-quotewriterswriting-processzen

  8. Robert M. Pirsig _ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle

    Mountains like these and travelers in the mountains and events that happen to them here are found not only in Zen literature but in the tales of every major religion. This allegory of a physical mountain for the spiritual one that stands between each soul and its goal is an easy and natural one to make. Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships. Some travel into the mountains accompanied by experienced guides who know the best and least dangerous routes by which they arrive at their destination. Still others, inexperienced and untrusting, attempt to make their own routes. Few of these are successful, but occasionally some, by sheer will and luck and grace, do make it. Once there they become more aware than any of the others that there's no single or fixed number of routes. There are as many routes as there are individual souls.
    book-quotereligionmountainszen

  9. Robert M. Pirsig _ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle

    But until then, and right now, the sun is bright, the air is cool, my head is clear, there's a whole day ahead of us, we're almost to the mountains, it's a good day to be alive. It's this thinner air that does it. You always feel like this when you start getting into higher altitudes.
    book-quotemountainszenmontana

  10. Robert M. Pirsig _ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle

    What he's looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn't want that because it is all around him. Every step's an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant.
    book-quotezensurroundingsthe-moment

  11. Robert M. Pirsig _ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle

    For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses.The more you look the more you see.
    book-quotequestionsthoughtsperspective

  12. Robert M. Pirsig _ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle

    Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion.
    book-quotemotorcyclezen
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