I was once crafting a story with someone, and in the voice of the character I was creating, asked why another character was so enamored of being served a dinner every night that had more food than he could hope to eat, with ingredients so rare and expensive that had he instead enjoyed the simple [...]
Archive for the ‘Zen Story’ Category
In today’s world, it’s not easy for everyone to publicly acknowledge whom they love, given all who would wheedle away at their choice.
Posted in Zen Story, tagged philosophy, zen, taoism, perspective, kindness, courage, koan, love, enshu on May 7, 2012 | 3 Comments »
I’m not able to write much today, so I thought I’d find a Zen Story I hadn’t shared back when I was more regular with the koans. If you love, love openly At a certain monastery, there were about twenty monks and one nun, named Eshun. Even though Eshun had the same shaved head and [...]
In true art, it’s not the skill of the hand, but of the imagination.
Posted in Zen Story, tagged art, patience, philosophy, practice, self improvement, taoism, zen on February 4, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Granted, I can say this having very little actual skill of hand, but that’s my comment to someone who just shared a completely seven flavors of awesome pic he put together. He denigrated the skill of the clipping but it wasn’t those details that mattered. I guess what I mean is more – it’s what’s [...]
Would have been rather a waste of energy to worry then, huh?
Posted in Living, Zen Story, tagged acceptance, daily living, enlightenment, frustration, gratitude, letting go, patience, perspective, philosophy, taoism, zen on February 1, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I’ve had a bit of a dilemma that I’ve been just rottenly unable to resolve. It’s pretty important to me, but every solution that seemed to bring me closer to resolving it ended up setting me back just as much. It’s been pretty frustrating. I did get the odd impulse to get truly fretful about [...]
Happy Newer Year!
Posted in Quotes, Zen Story, tagged acceptance, letting go, patience, perspective, philosophy, taoism, zen on January 22, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Quite a very lot much has happened since my last post. I’ve kept meaning to come back and catch up on posting again, but something kept distracting me. In fact, I’d planned to post a happy new year and begin again on the 1st, but again, got sidetracked and didn’t. It started to bug me, [...]
Life can go so much easier once you’ve made friends with death.
Posted in Zen Story, tagged acceptance, death, koan, letting go, life, mondo, perspective, philosophy, taoism, thoughts, waking up, zen on November 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I’m going to retell a Zen story that I came across again on today’s calendar page. To me, it conveys how much easier it is to bear a situation if you don’t feel totally stuck and recognize that there is a way out (however unpleasant). It also gets me thinking about letting go, and how [...]
One trick is to receive without hoarding, take hold without clinging, and always always remember that sometimes it’s just time to let go.
Posted in Zen Story, tagged acceptance, courage, gratitude, inner peace, mondo, philosophy, sleepliving, taoism, waking up, zen on June 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Today I’m back in the mindset of trying to embrace absolutely everything, everyplace and everytime I encounter, so I can accept it, use it, and build on it. What is there is there, and so long as I feel any want to push things from me, it’s preventing me from picking up what’s useful and [...]
A gentle word may often be more powerful than a harsh one.
Posted in Zen Story, tagged family, friendship, kindness, koan, mondo, philosophy, Sengai, taoism, zen, zen master on April 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I’ve been talking with some friends recently about giving feedback, advice or even ‘admonishment’ to friends or strangers. The issue was how much really needs to be said, how harsh a comment the situation might call for, and how to tell the difference. I’m still not sure I can really tell the difference, but I [...]
It’s not that randomness isn’t at all random, just like the room isn’t entirely not-empty
Posted in Zen Story, tagged Gerry Sussman, hacker, koan, Marvin Minsky, mondo, perspective, philosophy, questions, random, taoism, zen, zen master on April 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I couldn’t quite get together a coherent, non-technical-related thought this morning, so I thought I’d look up the Hacker Koan entry in Wikipedia for inspiration. A Hacker Koan is a “koan” made up by computing enthusiasts, especially network and AI programmers, particularly at MIT. One of the examples there I really like, and since they’re [...]
Ask and receive, and when the door opens go through it
Posted in Zen Story, tagged change, gratitude, hope, koan, mondo, philosophy, questions, taoism, zen, zen master on March 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Today’s thought is just a Zen koan that says pretty much what I have on my mind: Gasan was a Zen monk who was pretty well known for his practice. One day a college student visited him and asked if he’d ever read the Christian bible. Gasan said he hadn’t, and asked the student to [...]
