Deshimaru Zen Quotes

#1. Every atom is working and resisting every thought in the mind. Everything we see and know is but the resultant of these two forces.

Swami Vivekananda

#2. Zen is not a particular state but the normal state: silent, peaceful, unagitated. In Zazen neither intention, analysis, specific effort nor imagination take place. It's enough just to be without hypocrisy, dogmatism, arrogance - embracing all opposites.

Taisen Deshimaru

#3. The general idiocy of mankind is such that they can be swayed by words, and however mortifying, for the present you have to accept the fact as you accept it in the cinema that a film to be a success must have a happy ending.

W. Somerset Maugham

#4. Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance.

Taisen Deshimaru

#5. To practice Zen or the Martial Arts, you must live intensely, wholeheartedly, without reserve - as if you might die in the next instant

Taisen Deshimaru

#6. I was used to theatre classes. I studied with my mother; she was a theatre teacher and directed, too, so it was very family-like. Then I studied with a great teacher in Paris, and she was wonderful; she pushed me, but she was a warm soul.

Juliette Binoche

#7. Tolling plan is a wonderful opportunity for political pandering, and some candidates are taking full advantage of it.

Robert James Thomson

#8. A catless writer is almost inconceivable.

Barbara Holland