Seeds for Meditation
xercise and open your mind by meditating on one of these each day.
We dance around in a ring and suppose, but the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
—Robert Frost
Can you be certain that at this very moment you are not a dragonfly dreaming that you are a person?
The adept has the use of everything, but is addicted to nothing.
If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not
understand, things are just as they are.
—Zen proverb
Power is so characteristically calm, that calmness in itself has the aspect of power.
—Bulwer-Lytton
And what if in your dream you went to heaven and there you plucked a strange and beautiful flower; and what if when you awoke you had the flower in your hand? Oh, what then?
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In order to draw a limit to thinking, we should have to think both sides of this limit.
—Wittgenstein
The reason angels can fly is that they take themselves so lightly.
—G. K. Chesterton
Those in a hurry do not arrive.
—Zen proverb
Think with the whole body.
—Taisen Deshimaru
A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Have much and be confused.
—Tao Te Ching
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.
—William Blake
The way up and the way down are one and the same.
—Heraclitus
Act without doing; work without effort.
—Tao Te Ching
One never goes so far as when one doesn’t know where one is going.
—Goethe
Tranquility begins at the water’s edge.
The similarity between a spiritual insight and the understanding of a joke must be well known to enlightened men and women, since they almost invariably show a great sense of humor. Zen, especially, is full of funny stories and anecdotes, and in the Tao Te Ching we read, “If it were not laughed at, it would not be sufficient to be Tao.”
—Fritzjof Capra
Sit quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.
—Zen proverb
We all stand in the midst of eternity. Now.
One moon shows in every pool; in every pool, the one moon.
—Zen forest saying
It is the same moon that is reflected in the puddles as in the fountains.
Magic is akin to science in that it always has a definite aim intimately associated with human instincts, needs, and pursuits. The magic art is directed towards the attainment of practical aims. Like other arts and crafts, it is also governed by a theory, by a system of principles which dictate the manner in which the act has to be performed in order to be effective.
—Bronislaw Malinowski
Who is the richer, he who has much and wants more or he who has little and wants less?
[E]ffective magic is transcendent nature.
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian) Evans]
Let the flower you hold in your hand be your world for that moment.
Why not walk in the aura of magic that gives to the small things
of life their uniqueness and importance? Why not befriend a toad today?
—Germaine Greer
You can’t think your way into a new way of living—you have to live your way into a new way of thinking.
The four qualities of the adept: to know, to will, to dare, and to keep the silence.
—Traditional
Learn to differentiate between the intentional and unintentional
contents of the mind.
When you point at the sky, don’t mistake your fingernail for the moon.
Do you come to a philosopher as to a cunning man, to learn
something by magic or witchcraft, beyond what can be known
by common prudence and discretion?
—David Hume
Anything that immobilizes you, gets in your way, and keeps you from your goals is part of you and is yours to dispose of as you wish.
You are the sum total of the choices you make.
For us necessity is not as of old an image without us, with whom
we can do warfare; it is a magic web woven through and through us, like that magnetic system of which modern science speaks,
penetrating us with a network subtler than our subtlest nerves,
yet bearing in it the central forces of the world.
—Walter Pater
It is impossible to separate yourself from the universe. You are one and the same.
You can’t put an ocean in your pocket.
Try being as an infant, knowing nothing except what you hear, see, smell, and feel.
Magic lives in curves, not angles.
—Attributed to Mason Cooley
Try too hard to define that central core of tranquility that exists within all of us, and it becomes impossible to reach. Accept it and it will always be there to be tapped into.
You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion.... Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat’s meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.
—Aldous Huxley
Life is like Sanskrit read to a pony.
—Lou Reed
We are cups constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
—Ray Bradbury
So an ancient once said, “Accept the anxieties and difficulties of this life.” Don’t expect your practice to be clear of obstacles. Without hindrances the mind that seeks enlightenment may be burnt out. So an ancient once said, “Attain deliverance in disturbances.”
—Zen Master Kyong Ho
A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.
—Francoise Rene Auguste Chateaubriand
The obstacle is the path.
—Zen proverb
Some of the quotations not otherwise attributed are from A Thousand Paths to Tranquility by David Baird, MQ Publications Limited for Hallmark Cards, Inc., 2002.