Zen Good Morning Quotes

Being free is as difficult and as perpetual — or rather fighting for one’s freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good jew or a good Moslem or a good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up in the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

Maybe (Taoist story) A classic ancient story illustrates the importance of equanimity and emotional resilience beautifully. Once upon a time, there was a wise old farmer who had worked on the land for over 40 years. One morning, while walking to his stable, he noticed that his horse had run away. His neighbours came to visit and sympathetically said to the farmer, “Such bad luck”. “Maybe,” the farmer replied. The following morning, however, the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “Such good luck,” the neighbours exclaimed. “Maybe,” the farmer replied. The following afternoon, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses and was thrown off, causing him to break his leg. The neighbours came to visit and tried to show sympathy and said to the farmer, “how unfortunate”. “Maybe,” answered the farmer. The following morning military officials came to the farmer’s village to draft young men into the army to fight in a new war. Observing that the farmer’s son’s leg was broken, they did not draft him into the war. The neighbours congratulated him on his good luck and the farmer calmly replied, “Maybe”.

The caterpillars were a problem, however. Fat, fuzzy and complacent, they sat upon his vegetables in veritable hordes, ignoring him until he addressed one directly. “Good morning, sir,” he said. The caterpillar paused the busy movement of its jaws to reply: “Pleasant weather, this, eh?” It was an ideal summer’s day. The skies stretched out in endless blue overhead, unmarred by a single wisp of cloud; the fresh scent of greenery and earth rose into the nostrils, imparting a lively pleasure in being alive and outdoors. “You seem troubled, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so,” said the caterpillar. Zacharias experienced a brief internal struggle, but decided upon candour.

The spirit of the place is not not friendly. Meals begin in silence; once everyone is seated, someone slaps the wooden clackers and leads a little chant. The food is often amazingly good, and despite the growing number of vegans in the ranks, heaps of delicious cheese are often melted and sprinkled and layered into the hot things that come out of the kitchen. At breakfast, watch the very senior people deal with rice gruel, and you'll know enough to spike yours with brown sugar and stir in some whole milk or cream, and you could do much worse on a morning in March. ("You can't change your karma, but you can sweeten your cereal," whispered an elderly priest when I nobly and foolishly added nothing to that blob in my bowl during my first stay at the farm.) Once eating is under way, the common dining room looks rather like a high school cafeteria; there are insider and outsider tables, and it is often easy to spot the new students and short-term guests—they're a few minutes late because they haven't memorized the schedule; they're smiling bravely, wielding their dinner trays like steering wheels, weaving around, desperately looking for a public parking space, hoping someone will wave or smile or otherwise signal them to safety I asked a practice leader about this, and she said she knew it was hard but people have to get over their self consciousness; for some newcomers, she said, that's zazen, that's their meditative practice. I think that's what I mean by not not friendly

The intersection of time and space is the unique place for you to be present and alive as you really are. But it’s pretty hard to be there. We don’t really know how to deal with the huge energies arising there. Still, if you seek a calm mind, the important point to learn is the exact, precise point where you manifest your own life and simultaneously the life of the whole universe. That is why we practice zazen. In zazen, as simple as we can, we try to just be present at the intersection where this very moment is functioning. At that time, in that place, there is no way to analyze zazen as something separate from you. All you can do is just be one with zazen as the rhythm of life and communicate directly with zazen using your whole body and mind. Then, through your skin, muscle, and bone, zazen teaches you the pure nature of human activity. Sitting right in the middle of the original, lively quality of human life is called shikantaza. Zazen as shikantaza is nothing but dynamic function and movement. That’s all! There is nothing else. When you see your life in terms of the human world and simultaneously in terms of real reality, many possibilities come up. Each moment is a unique opportunity for you to create your life anew. The time and space of whatever you do—saying “good morning,” having a meal together, or sitting zazen—is the precise point where you digest the life of all sentient beings and create new life. This is our practice every day. It is also the practice of the whole universe.

For a long time I didn’t have a defined Dana doctrine to describe this approach; it was more a ball of string. Then one morning at a hotel I came back to my room for bed after a speaking event, and the hotel staff had placed a Zen card with a Buddhist saying on my pillow (this will make Gutfeld roll his eyes). It read, “Say little. But when you speak, utter gentle words that touch the heart. Be truthful. Express kindness. Abstain from vanity. This is the way.” I had an “Aha!” moment when I read those words, because it captured how I was trying to live my life most productively and happily. I carried the card with me for months until I tacked it in my medicine cabinet, and I still see it every morning and night when I brush my teeth. The card is a little worn, but its message never gets old. In the morning it helps set my intention for the day, and at night it reminds me to forgive myself if I haven’t lived up to it (usually because I’ve let Bob Beckel push my buttons).

The Baron was good with two things: sex, and death. And what was sex anyway—what was orgasm but what the French (those cunning linguists of the language of love) referred to as a Little Death? What was life but a ticking clock toward the grave, and how did life start but with an unfettered hump toward morning?

Meditation does not have to be long or complicated for you to receive its benefits. If you haven’t done it before, I suggest you begin by meditating for five minutes a day. A good time to engage in this practice is in the morning just after you’ve awakened, but you can do it at any time that works for you. Find a comfortable position where you are sitting with your spine straight. Close your eyes and concentrate on your breath. Just follow your breath in and out for five minutes. If you find that you have started to think of something other than your breath during those five minutes, gently pull yourself back to concentrating on your breath. What you are seeking is five minutes of relaxed, easy focus on your breath. In, out, in, out, in, out. Summarizing how important this centeredness practice is, the Zen master Pao-chih simply said, “If the mind is never aroused toward objects, then wherever you walk is the site of enlightenment.

A monk's day begins with cleaning. We don't do this because the temple is dirty or messy. We do it to eliminate the suffering in our hearts. We sweep dust to remove our worldly desires. We scrub dirt to free ourselves of attachments. The Zen sect of Buddhism is renowned for the cleaning practices of its monks, but cleaning is greatly valued in Japanese Buddhism in general as a way to "cultivate the mind". Daily housework is an opportunity to contemplate the self. The Japanese idea of not being wasteful is not just about avoiding waste - it also embodies a spirit of gratitude toward objects. People who don't respect objects don't respect people. Cleaning should be done in the morning. Cleaning quietly while the silence envelops you - before other people and plants awaken - refreshes and clears your mind. In the world of Buddhism, reusing items is a standard that guides our day-to-day lives. To remove impurities from your heart, be sure to keep the bathroom sparkling clean. Cleaning is training for staying in the now. Therein lies the reason for being particular about cleanliness. It is important to express gratitude at the changing of the seasons. Only those who do this truly know how to achieve closure in their feelings. In order to remove impurities from the heart, you must reduce wastefulness in your heart. People who endlessly chase after new things have lost their freedom to earthly desires. Only those who can enjoy using their imaginations when working with limited resources know true freedom. It is vital that you get rid of anything that you do not need. Hospitality starts with cleanliness. There is an old Zen teaching that says that if you haven't washed your face, everything you do throughout the day will be impolite and hasty. Succumbing to sleep gluttony is giving in to your wordly desires. Idly sleeping your days away is no way to live. Quite honestly, a life free of possessions is very comfortable. There are some things you start to realize when living the Zen life of simplicity, namely, that you only keep things of good quality. Conversely, if you are surrounded only by poor-quality objects that you don't care about, it is impossible to understand what it is to truly value something. There is an old Zen saying that goes: "Where there is nothing, there is everything." By letting go of everything, you can open up a universe of unlimited possibilities.

Good morning” in Japanese is Ohayo gozaimasu, which literally means “It is early.” Implicit in this expression is, “It is early in the day, and having made it safely thus far, let’s continue to strive for the best.

Try not to force your idea on someone, but rather think about it with him. If you feel you have won the discussion, that also is the wrong attitude. Try not to win in the argument; just listen to it; but it is also wrong to behave as if you had lost. Usually when we say something, we are apt to try to sell our teaching or force our idea. But between Zen students there is no special purpose in speaking or in listening. Sometimes we listen, sometimes we talk; that is all. It is like a greeting: “Good morning!” Through this kind of communication we can develop our way.