Dt Quotes

The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one's humdrum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity.

God against man. Man against God. Man against nature. Nature against man. Nature against God. God against nature. Very funny religion!

the intuitive recognition of the instant, thus reality... is the highest act of wisdom

When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect the mountain exercises vanishes into the air.

We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.

When a thing is denied, the very denial involves something not denied.

The idea of Zen is to catch life as it flows. There is nothing extraordinary or mysterious about Zen. I raise my hand ; I take a book from the other side of the desk ; I hear the boys playing ball outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the neighbouring wood: — in all these I am practising Zen, I am living Zen. No wordy discussions is necessary, nor any explanation. I do not know why — and there is no need of explaining, but when the sun rises the whole world dances with joy and everybody’s heart is filled with bliss. If Zen is at all conceivable, it must be taken hold of here.

The one who dies has it easy, you know. The one who's left behind is the one who truly suffers.

I need this. I need you. I can't imagine my life without you.

the finger pointing at the moon remains a finger and under no circumstances can it be changed into the moon itself.

The way to ascend unto God is to descend into one's self"; -- these are Hugo's words. "If thou wishest to search out the deep things of God, search out the depths of thine own spirit";

Grammar, he saw, was agreement, community, consensus.

People often ask what the meaning of life is. What's the point in all of this? As far as I can tell, life is pretty much pointless without love.

Zen has nothing to do with letters, words, or sutras.

However insistently the blind may deny the existence of the sun, they cannot annihilate it.

That was it exactly—irony was defeatist, timid, the telltale of a generation too afraid to say what it meant, and so in danger of forgetting it had anything to say.

The basic idea of Zen is to come in touch with the inner workings of our being, and to do so in the most direct way possible, without resorting to anything external or superadded.

How hard, then, and yet how easy it is to understand Zen! Hard because to understand it is not to understand it; easy because not to understand it is to understand it.

No amount of wordy explanations will ever lead us into the nature of our own selves. The more you explain, the further it runs away from you. It is like trying to get hold of your own shadow. You run after it and it runs with you at the identical rate of speed.

Zen perceives and feels, and does not abstract and meditate. Zen penetrates and is finally lost in the immersion. Meditation, on the other hand, is outspokenly dualistic and consequently inevitably superficial.

Zen professes itself to be the spirit of Buddhism, but in fact it is the spirit of all religions and philosophies. When Zen is thoroughly understood, absolute peace of mind is attained, and a man lives as he ought to live.

[excerpt] The usual I say. Essence. Spirit. Medicine. A taste. I say top shelf. Straight up. A shot. A sip. A nip. I say another round. I say brace yourself. Lift a few. Hoist a few. Work the elbow. Bottoms up. Belly up. Set ‘em up. What’ll it be. Name your poison. I say same again. I say all around. I say my good man. I say my drinking buddy. I say git that in ya. Then a quick one. Then a nightcap. Then throw one back. Then knock one down. Fast & furious I say. Could savage a drink I say. Chug. Chug-a-lug. Gulp. Sauce. Mother’s milk. Everclear. Moonshine. White lightning. Firewater. Hootch. Relief. Now you’re talking I say. Live a little I say. Drain it I say. Kill it I say. Feeling it I say. Wobbly. Breakfast of champions I say. I say candy is dandy but liquor is quicker. I say Houston, we have a drinking problem. I say the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems. I say god only knows what I’d be without you. I say thirsty. I say parched. I say wet my whistle. Dying of thirst. Lap it up. Hook me up. Watering hole. Knock a few back. Pound a few down. My office. Out with the boys I say. Unwind I say. Nurse one I say. Apply myself I say. Toasted. Glow. A cold one a tall one a frosty I say. One for the road I say. Two-fisted I say. Never trust a man who doesn’t drink I say. Drink any man under the table I say. Then a binge then a spree then a jag then a bout. Coming home on all fours. Could use a drink I say. A shot of confidence I say. Steady my nerves I say. Drown my sorrows. I say kill for a drink. I say keep ‘em comin’. I say a stiff one. Drink deep drink hard hit the bottle. Two sheets to the wind then. Knackered then. Under the influence then. Half in the bag then. Out of my skull I say. Liquored up. Rip-roaring. Slammed. Fucking jacked. The booze talking. The room spinning. Feeling no pain. Buzzed. Giddy. Silly. Impaired. Intoxicated. Stewed. Juiced. Plotzed. Inebriated. Laminated. Swimming. Elated. Exalted. Debauched. Rock on. Drunk on. Bring it on. Pissed. Then bleary. Then bloodshot. Glassy-eyed. Red-nosed. Dizzy then. Groggy. On a bender I say. On a spree. I say off the wagon. I say on a slip. I say the drink. I say the bottle. I say drinkie-poo. A drink a drunk a drunkard. Swill. Swig. Shitfaced. Fucked up. Stupefied. Incapacitated. Raging. Seeing double. Shitty. Take the edge off I say. That’s better I say. Loaded I say. Wasted. Off my ass. Befuddled. Reeling. Tanked. Punch-drunk. Mean drunk. Maintenance drunk. Sloppy drunk happy drunk weepy drunk blind drunk dead drunk. Serious drinker. Hard drinker. Lush. Drink like a fish. Boozer. Booze hound. Alkie. Sponge. Then muddled. Then woozy. Then clouded. What day is it? Do you know me? Have you seen me? When did I start? Did I ever stop? Slurring. Reeling. Staggering. Overserved they say. Drunk as a skunk they say. Falling down drunk. Crawling down drunk. Drunk & disorderly. I say high tolerance. I say high capacity. They say protective custody. Blitzed. Shattered. Zonked. Annihilated. Blotto. Smashed. Soaked. Screwed. Pickled. Bombed. Stiff. Frazzled. Blasted. Plastered. Hammered. Tore up. Ripped up. Destroyed. Whittled. Plowed. Overcome. Overtaken. Comatose. Dead to the world. The old K.O. The horrors I say. The heebie-jeebies I say. The beast I say. The dt’s. B’jesus & pink elephants. A mindbender. Hittin’ it kinda hard they say. Go easy they say. Last call they say. Quitting time they say. They say shut off. They say dry out. Pass out. Lights out. Blackout. The bottom. The walking wounded. Cross-eyed & painless. Gone to the world. Gone. Gonzo. Wrecked. Sleep it off. Wake up on the floor. End up in the gutter. Off the stuff. Dry. Dry heaves. Gag. White knuckle. Lightweight I say. Hair of the dog I say. Eye-opener I say. A drop I say. A slug. A taste. A swallow. Down the hatch I say. I wouldn’t say no I say. I say whatever he’s having. I say next one’s on me. I say bottoms up. Put it on my tab. I say one more. I say same again

But nothing awakens religious consciousness like suffering.

Modern life seems to recede further and further away from nature, and closely connected with this fact we seem to be losing the feeling of reverence towards nature. It is probably inevitable when science and machinery, capitalism and materialism go hand in hand so far in a most remarkably successful manner. Mysticism, which is the life of religion in whatever sense we understand it, has come to be relegated altogether in the background. Without a certain amount of mysticism there is no appreciation for the feeling of reverence, and, along with it, for the spiritual significance of humility. Science and scientific technique have done a great deal for humanity; but as far as our spiritual welfare is concerned we have not made any advances over that attained by our forefathers. In fact we are suffering at present the worst kind of unrest all over the world.

Bryn chuckled low in his chest. “I swear I’ve had dreams about you that began like this.” I stopped kissing him and raised my eyebrows. “Oh yeah, and how’d those dreams end up?” He chuckled again, tugging at my robe. “I’m a guy, how do you think they ended up?

If there is anything Zen strongly emphasizes it is the attainment of freedom; that is, freedom from all unnatural encumbrances. Meditation is something artificially put on; it does not belong to the native activity of the mind. Upon what do the fowls of the air meditate? Upon what do the fish in the water meditate? They fly; they swim. Is not that enough? Who wants to fix his mind on the unity of God and man, or on the nothingness of life? Who wants to be arrested in the daily manifestations of his life-activity by such meditations as the goodness of a divine being or the everlasting fire of hell?

In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness.

Taking it all in all, Zen is emphatically a matter of personal experience; if anything can be called radically empirical, it is Zen. No amount of reading, no amount of teaching, no amount of contemplation will ever make one a Zen master. Life itself must be grasped in the midst of its flow; to stop it for examination and analysis is to kill it, leaving its cold corpse to be embraced.

You’re absolutely insane, you know that, right?” “Insanely smart.” Jenna giggled as she absentmindedly worked some of her rainbow hair into a curl with her fingertips.

For God’s sake, girl, there are more important things on our plates than your sex life.” Like mine, I silently added sheepishly.

I love you, Peej. More than I can even begin to explain.” His voice was so low and husky it seemed to brush things on my insides, making me shudder in turn.

In the age of media, we are nothing but minds waiting to be filled, emotions waiting to be manipulated.

A good scientist (DT quoted Einstein) will acknowledge that more than 50% of scientific breakthroughs are reached through post-rationalised ideas, not through sequential logic.

...I'm not you...nw dt wud b disastrous..!!

I like you,” he rumbled. His voice was low and husky, and it sounded as if he hadn’t spoken in awhile. Unable to stop myself, the words just spilled from my lips. “And I should care because?

In Zen there must be satori; there must be a general mental upheaval which destroys the old accumulations of intellection and lays down the foundation for a new life; there must be the awakening of a new sense which will review the old things from a hitherto undreamed-of angle of observation.

This isn't my last brush with catastrophe while making Destination Truth. Rather, it's merely the opening act in a cabaret of close calls, all in the name of exploration. I'm not saying that making D.T. is dangerous; it's not, per se. It's just that when you go out of your way to find adventure, sometimes adventure bites you on the ass. The key is figuring out how to walk away in one piece.

Not a monster, just a man. A familiarity in the way he held his shoulders. The DT Killer showed her his face. Showed her the glint in his smile. It wasn’t the face she thought she’d see. It was Jason Bell.

Damn Speakers! I always forget about her sneaky little spies. The image of a little voyeur squirrel hanging around outside my window and then running to Jenna to report any indiscretions on my part was absolutely horrifying.

Of course never in a million years did I ever think I'd end up having a 'who's your daddy?' moment.

I knew one hundred percent what my answer would always be … I could never willingly walk away from him. Never. All consequences be damned.

Evangelism is just one beggar telling another where to find bread.

His anguish, he wrote, had multiple sources, from a fear of fame to a fear of failure. Behind the ordinary fears lurked the fear of being ordinary.

centerless pop-culture country full of marginalized subnations that are themselves postmodern, looped, self-referential, self-obsessed, voyeuristic, passive, slack-jawed, debased.

America was, Wallace now knew, a nation of addicts, unable to see that what looked like love freely given was really need neurotically and chronically unsatisfied.

Somehow I got lucky, and you love me back. I'll fight for you as long as you want me

It's one thing to want someone, to desire to be with them, but it's an entirely different thing to actually need them. I never wanted to need anyone ever again.

Is something bothering you, Sam?” Nixon asked with a deep furrow between his concerned chocolate eyes. “You mean besides the dead body lying in front of us?

It is the ultimate metafictional act, not homicide but suicide. (Wallace would say that one of the problems of metafiction is that there is no difference.)

When mind discriminates, there is manifoldness of things; when it does not it looks into the true state of things.

I can’t let you die!” I sobbed. “It’ll be like I’m dead anyways without you. Since I left, that’s what it’s felt like—like some part of me died because I couldn’t be with you, couldn’t see you. I’d rather die knowing it was for your freedom.

Bryn,” I murmured, twisting around to see his sleeping face steeped in the brightness of the day. I stroked my fingers down his cheek and ran my hands through his silky mane of black hair. I must be dead, I mused, for certainly waking up in Bryn’s arms is heaven.

Perhaps there is after all nothing mysterious in Zen. Everything is open to your full view. If you eat your food and keep yourself cleanly dressed and work on the farm to raise your rice or vegetables, you are doing all that is required of you on this earth, and the infinite is realized in you.

I rolled my eyes at Jeremy. Guys and their egos are completely insufferable. "What do you want me to say Jeremy? You're hot, and you're a good kisser. But I'm in love with Bryn. End of story." A smile spread across his face, the gold flecks in his eyes dancing. "So I'm still in the game." I threw my hands up in the air in exasperation. "This isn't a game-it's my life!

Emptiness constantly falls within our reach. It is always with us, and conditions all our knowledge, all our deeds and is our life itself. It is only when we attempt to pick it up and hold it forth as something before our eyes that it eludes us, frustrates all our efforts and vanishes like vapor.

What do you want?” I grumbled, not really sure if I was imagining his voice or not. “I’m not a figment of your imagination.” “Then how did you know what I was thinking if you’re not all in my mind? Besides, that’s just what a figment would say.” I scrunched up my face in a display of my skepticism

Hurry means that we gather impressions but have no experiences, that we collect acquaintances but make no friends, that we attend meetings but experience no encounter. We must recover eternity if we are to find time, and eternity is what Jesus came to restore. For without it, there can be no charity.

In Christianity we seem to be too conscious of God, though we say that in him we live and move and have our being. Zen wants to have this last trace of God-consciousness, if possible, obliterated. That is why Zen masters advise us not to linger where the Buddha is, and to pass quickly away where he is not.

[W]e must remember that the finger pointing at the moon remains a finger and under no circumstances can it be changed into the moon itself. Danger always lurks where the intellect slyly creeps in and takes the index for the moon itself.

They justly compare Zen to lightning. The rapidity, however, does not constitute Zen; its naturalness, its freedom from artificialities, its being expressive of life itself, its originality—these are the essential characteristics of Zen.

Focus, my little Seer, you have time to contemplate my good looks at another time,” Khol said with amusement. “I’m not doing anything of the sort. You’re not a mind reader, so stop pretending to be,” I snapped as my cheeks heated. I was beginning to wonder if he really was able to read my mind and just wasn’t telling me.

Copying is slavery. The letter must never be followed, only the spirit is to be grasped. Higher affirmations live in the spirit. And where is the spirit? Seek it in your everyday experience, and therein lies abundance of proof for all you need.

Hey!” I exclaimed, seeing Khol standing beside my bed with my pillow in his hands. His tall frame seemed to take up more room in the light of day, and his dark auburn hair looked like fire in the morning sun. His mere physical presence in the same room as me still caused my body to shiver with excitement. Damn . . . not good.

And then I did something really stupid: I reached back and smacked him across the face with as much strength as I was capable of, which wasn’t much, but enough to leave a red mark. The sound of my hand hitting his face seemed to echo inside the large room. “I’m not entirely human either,” I hissed without flinching away from him.

If you sit in the dark long enough, your eyes will adjust. If you completely immerse yourself in death, eventually it will welcome you home into its sweet embrace.

I don't trust myself with you." It had to be said, even if I hated admitting it to him and myself.

In the study of Zen, the power of an all-illuminating insight must go hand in hand with a deep sense of humility and meekness of heart.

There is considerable evidence to suggest that absolute tyranny is DT’s wet dream.

What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant.

The idea of Zen is to catch lie as it flows. There is nothing extraordinary or mysterious about Zen. [...]. No wordy discussion is necessary, nor any explanation. I do not know why—and there is no need of explaining, but when the sun rises the whole world dances with joy and everybody's heart is filled with bliss. If Zen is at all conceivable, it must be taken hold of here.

There is something rejuvenating in the possession of Zen. The spring flowers look prettier, and the mountain stream runs cooler and more transparent. The subjective revolution that brings about this state of things cannot be called abnormal. When life becomes more enjoyable and its expense broadens to include the universe itself, there must be something in *satori* that is quite precious and well worth one's striving after.

It was as if she had just discovered the irreversible process. It astonished her to think that so much could be lost, even the quantity of hallucination belonging just to the sailor that the world would bear no further trace of. She knew, because she had held him, that he suffered DT’s. Behind the initials was a metaphor, a delirium tremens, a trembling unfurrowing of the mind’s plowshare. The saint whose water can light lamps, the clairvoyant whose lapse in recall is the breath of God, the true paranoid for whom all is organized in spheres joyful or threatening about the central pulse of himself, the dreamer whose puns probe ancient fetid shafts and tunnels of truth all act in the same special relevance to the word, or whatever it is the word is there, buffering, to protect us from. The act of metaphor then was a thrust at truth and a lie, depending where you were: inside, safe, or outside, lost. Oedipa did not know where she was. Trembling, unfurrowed, she slipped sidewise, screeching back across grooves of years, to hear again the earnest, high voice of her second or third collegiate love Ray Glozing bitching among “uhs” and the syncopated tonguing of a cavity, about his freshman calculus; “dt,” God help this old tattooed man, meant also a time differential, a vanishingly small instant in which change had to be confronted at last for what it was, where it could no longer disguise itself as something innocuous like an average rate; where velocity dwelled in the projectile though the projectile be frozen in midflight, where death dwelled in the cell though the cell be looked in on at its most quick. She knew that the sailor had seen worlds no other man had seen if only because there was that high magic to low puns, because DT’s must give access to dt’s of spectra beyond the known sun, music made purely of Antarctic loneliness and fright. But nothing she knew of would preserve them, or him.

Is satori something that is not at all capable of intellectual analysis? Yes, it is an experience which no amount of explanation or argument can make communicable to others unless the latter themselves had it previously. If satori is amenable to analysis in the sense that by so doing it becomes perfectly clear to another who has never had it, that satori will be no satori. For a satori turned into a concept ceases to be itself; and there will no more be a Zen experience.

All the causes, all the conditions of satori are in the mind; they are merely waiting for the maturing. [...] From the very beginning nothing has been kept from you, all that you wished to see has been there all the time before you, it was only yourself that closed the eye to the fact. Therefore, there is in Zen nothing to explain, nothing to teach, that will add to your knowledge. Unless it grows out of yourself no knowledge is really yours, it is only a borrowed plumage.

I go through a loop in which I notice all the ways I am - for just an example - self-centered and careerist and not true to standards and values that transcend my own petty interests, and feel like I'm not one of the good ones; but then I countenance the fact that here at least I am worrying about it; so then I feel better about myself (I mean, at least this stuff is on my mind, at least I'm dissatisfied with my level of integrity and commitment); but this soon becomes a vehicle for feeling superior to (imagined) Others...It has to do with God and gods and a basic sense of trust in the universe v. fear that the universe must be held at bay and micromanaged into giving me some smidgen of some gratification I feel I simply can't live without. It's all very confusing. I think I'm very honest and candid, but I'm also proud of how honest and candid I am - so where does that put me.

The truth is out there somewhere, but the dog needs to be walked.

He told his roommate that when he was writing, “I can’t feel my ass in the chair.

American writers were still content to describe an ironic culture when they should be showing the way out.

I’d always thought that love conquered all. And I believed that was still true. But maybe the question wasn’t would love conquer all, but rather whose?

Ik zei vlug: 'Ze eten niet, drinken niet, ze pikken je kleren niet en ze kunnen niet op vakantie gaan, niet slapen, geen scheten laten of dubbel spel spelen of brutale antwoorden geven of je in de steek laten als je ze nodig hebt. En ze willen niet betaald worden en ze hebben geen lange tenen en ze hoeven niet geschilderd te worden en ze lijden niet aan de Kwelders en ze hebben geen menopauze en ze moorden en martelen niet en ze vechten geen oorlogen uit...' 'Ze kunnen ze wel veroorzaken,' wist Tess er nog gauw tussen te krijgen. '... en ze doen niets anders dan er fraai uitzien, terwijl ze staan te wachten tot je met ze doet wat je maar wilt, zoals ze bijvoorbeeld lézen. Goed... is dt genoeg voor vandaag, kunnen we nu doorgaan?

Because your mine." I snuggled in tighter to his muscular chest. "And I don't want the Jennas of the world to get a good look at what they've been missing and steal you away." I inhaled deeply, letting Bryn's scent surround me in comfort - home. As I began drifting off to sleep, I heard Bryn whisper something that id never forget. "There's never any danger of that. I'm yours. Always

You’re perfect,” I whispered, not really meaning for him to hear. Like he needed a bigger ego. His full succulent lips tipped up at the corners and his dark, lust-laden eyes twinkled. “I know.

Религия ли е Дзен? Дзен не е религия в общоприетия смисъл на думата, защото в Дзен няма Бог, пред който да се прекланяме, няма обреди и церемонии, които да спазваме, няма отвъдна обител за мъртвите, и най-сетне, в Дзен няма душа, за чието благополучие да отговаря друг, за чието безсмъртие да се грижат хората. Дзен ще рече освободеност от цялото това бреме на догми и религиозни вярвания.

He [Wallace] sent a quick note to his friend [Franzen] explaining his behavior. "the bold fact is that I'm a little afraid of you right now,"[...] "all I can tell you is that I may have been that [a worthy opponent] for you a couple/ three years ago, and maybe 16 months or tow or 5 or 10 years hence, but right now I am a pathetic and very confused man, a failed writer at 28, who is so jealous, so sickly searing envious of you and Vollmann and Mark Leyner and even David Fuckward Leavitt and any young man who is right now producing pages with which he can live and even approving them off some base-clause of conviction about the entrprise's meaning and end that I consider suicide a reasonable- if not at this point a desirable- option with respect to the whole wretched problem.

Was it possible to love more than one person at the same time? I had always thought it just kind of a convenient notion that authors of novels and screen plays used to amp up intrigue in their stories. I could remember more than a few times while reading a book or watching a movie, I had laughed and rolled my eyes at the heroine for finding herself in such a situation. And yet . . . here I was . . .

He found he was popular, known for a loose style and an appealing willingness to digress. “We spend most of our time talking about Twin Peaks and The Simpsons so they think I am an okay caballero,” he told Markson.

There is a sense—again brought to full boil in Infinite Jest—that our obsession with being entertained has deadened our affect, that we are not, as a character warns in that book, choosing carefully enough what to love.

This acquiring of a new viewpoint in Zen is called *satori* (*wu* in Chinese) and its verb form is *satoru*. Without it there is no Zen, for the life of Zen begins with the "opening of *satori*". *Satori* may be defined as intuitive looking-into, in contradistinction to intellectual and logical understanding. Whatever the definition, *satori* means the unfolding of a new world hitherto unperceived in the confusion of the dualistic mind.

When David Markson wrote in June to complain about an author's getting an award he though should have been his, Wallace gently warned him away from the pitfall of envy: "Mostly I try to remember how lucky I am to be able to write, and doubly, triply lucky I am that anyone else is willing to read it, to say nothing of publishing it. I'm no pollyanna - this keeping-the-spirits-up shit is hard work, and I don't often do it well. But I try... Life is good

Както казват учителите по Дзен, коан е само парче тухла, с която чукаш по вратата, показалец, насочен към луната. Той има за цел да синтезира или да преодолява — без значение коя дума ще изберете — дуализма на сетивата. Докато съзнанието не е свободно да приеме звук от една ръка, то остава ограничено и раздвоено в своя вреда. Вместо да намери ключа към тайните на съзиданието, съзнанието е безнадеждно погребано в относителността на нещата, т. е. неистинската им страна. Докато съзнанието не се освободи от оковите, то никога няма да разглежда света в неговата цялост и да бъде удовлетворено. Всъщност звукът, произведен от едната ръка, стига и горе до рая, и долу до ада, така както „истинското лице“ на човека е обърнато към цялото пространство на съзиданието и до края на времето.

with all due deference to the vast doctrinal differences between Buddhism and Christianity, and preserving intact all respect for the claims of the different religions: in no way mixing up the Christian “vision of God” with Buddhist “enlightenment,” we can nevertheless say that the two have this psychic “limitlessness” in common. And they tend to describe it in much the same language. It is now “emptiness,” now “dark night,” now “perfect freedom,” now “no-mind,” now “poverty” in the sense used by Eckhart and by D.T. Suzuki later on in this book (see p. 110).

Part 2 Etienne: I cheated on her every day. In my mind, I thought of you in ways I shouldn’t have, again and again. She was nothing compared to you. I’ve never felt this way about anybody before… Anna: But… Etienne: The first day of school. We weren’t physics partners by accident. I saw Professeur Wakefield assigning lab parnters based on where people were sitting, so I leaned forward to borrow a pencil form you at just the right moment so he’dt think we were next to each other. Anna, I wanted to be your partner the first day. Anna: But … Etienne: I bought you love poetry! „I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.“ Neruda. I starred the pasasge. God. Why didn’t you open it? Anna: Because you said it was for school Etienne: I said you were beautiful. I slept in your bed! Anna: You never made a move! You had a girlfriend! Etienne: No matter what a terrible boyfriend I was, I wouldn’t actually cheat on her. But I thought you’d know. With me being there, I thought you’d know. Anna: How could I know if you never said anything? Etienne: How could I know if you never said anything? Anna: You had Ellie! Etienne: You had Toph! And Dave! Anna. I’m sorry for what happened in Luxembourg Gardens. Not because of the kiss – I’ve never had a kiss like that in my life – but because I didn’t tell you why I was running away. I chased after Meredith because of you. All I could think about was what that bastard did to you last Christmas. Toph never tired to explain or apologize. How could I do that to Mer? And I ought to have called you before I went to Ellie’s, but I was so anxious to just end it, once and for all, that i wasn’t thinking straight.

I think you forgot to unlock me.” James rumbled. I peered up at him and ran my hands over his wrists and down his arms, sitting up to nip at his neck. “No, I didn’t forget. I think I like you this way and am considering keeping you just like this.” I smiled impishly. “Kat,” James warned.

Neither one of us said anything. There was no need for words at the moment, what we’d needed to say to each other had been fully expressed with our bodies, each word communicated artfully with the touch of our fingertips and the slide of our skin against one another’s—so for the moment—we were all talked out.

Zen purposes to discipline the mind itself, to make it its own master, through an insight into its proper nature. This getting into the real nature of one's own mind or soul is the fundamental object of Zen Buddhism. Zen, therefore, is more than meditation and Dhyana in its ordinary sense. The discipline of Zen consists in opening the mental eye in order to look into the very reason of existence.

Consideremos la Ley que fue dada en el Monte Sinaí. Leemos allí que un mandamiento entero de entre los diez, fue dedicado al Día del Señor y que éste es el más largo, más completo y más detallado de todos (Éx. 20:8-11). Notemos una distinción clara y amplia entre estos Diez Mandamientos y todos los demás que componen la Ley de Moisés. Fue la única parte hablada en presencia de todo el pueblo y, después que Dios la dijo, el libro de Deuteronomio afirma expresamente: “y no añadió más” (Dt. 5:22). El anuncio fue bajo circunstancias de singular solemnidad y acompañado de truenos, rayos y un terremoto. Fue la única parte en las tablas de piedra escrita por Dios mismo. Fue la única parte colocada dentro del arca. Encontramos la ley acerca del día de reposo lado a lado con la ley sobre idolatría, homicidio, adulterio, hurto y las demás. Me es totalmente imposible creer que esto tuvo la intención de ser sólo una obligación temporal.

Monks ought to behave like a grinding stone: Changsan comes to sharpen his knife, Li-szŭ comes to grind his axe, everybody and anybody who wants to have his metal improved in anyway comes and makes use of the stone. Each time the stone is rubbed, it wears out, but it makes no complaint, nor does it boast of its usefulness. And those who come to it go home fully benefitted; some of them may not be quite appreciative of the stone; but the stone itself remains ever contented......

quoted Lewis Hyde, whose pamphlet on John Berryman and alcohol he had read in his early months at Granada House: “Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy the cage.” Then he continued: This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. It’s critical and destructive, a ground-clearing….[I]rony’s singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks.

Във всички тези обреди — благочестиви и пречистващи за повечето вярващи — Дзен вижда нещо изкуствено. „Съвършените йоги не постигат нирвана, а монасите, нарушаващи обета си, не отиват в ада“, гласи един от дзен-принципите. За обикновеното съзнание това противоречи на общоприетите морални норми, но именно тук се крие истината и жизнеността на Дзен. Дзен е духът на човека. Дзен вярва във вътрешната му чистота и доброта. Всичко насилствено добавено или отнето от духа нарушава неговата цялост. Затова Дзен е категорично против всякакви религиозни условности.

While the founder [of any religious or spiritual system] was still walking among his followers and disciples, the latter did not distinguish between the person of their leader and his teaching; for the teaching was realized in the person and the person was livingly explained in the teaching. To embrace the teaching was to follow his steps - that is, to believe in him. His presence among them was enough to inspire them and convince them of the truth of his teaching... So long as he lived among them and spoke to them his teaching and his person appealed to them as an individual unity. But things went differently when his stately and inspiring personality was no more seen in the flesh... The similarities that were, either consciously or unconsciously, recognized as existing in various forms between leader and disciple gradually vanished, and as they vanished, the other side - that is, that which made him so distinctly different from his followers - came to assert itself all the more emphatically and irresistibly. The result was the conviction that he must have come from quite a unique spiritual source. The process of deification thus constantly went on until, some centuries after the death of the Master, he became a direct manifestation of the Supreme Being himself - in fact, he was the Highest One in the flesh, in him there was a divine humanity in perfect realization... Indeed, the teaching is to be interpreted in the light of the teacher's divine personality. The latter now predominates over the whole system; he is the centre whence radiate the rays of Enlightenment, salvation is only possible in believing in him as saviour.