Zen Pencils Quotes

The pencil is mightier than the pen.

The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle.

Pencil breaks when you sharpen it fully. A student who wants to write only after fully sharpening the pencil will never be able to write. He will waste whole pencil in sharpening.

Writing isn’t necessarily a gift it is a passion. You can write a one page masterpiece to 99 pages of crap. What keeps you coming back is that Zen moment when you enlightened your own self with a few cleverly arranged words and saved yourself a $200 trip to the shrink, by simply buying a #2 pencil.

And that's what separates the pros from the hobbyists, the ability to create when you don't feel like creating. The ability to "master their disinclination".

Along with the greening of May came the rain. Then the clouds disappeared and a soft pale lightness fell over the city, as if Kyoto had broken free of its tethers and lifted up toward the sun. The mornings were as dewy and verdant as a glass of iced green tea. The nights folded into pencil-gray darkness fragrant with white flowers. And everyone's mood seemed buoyant, happy, and carefree. When I wasn't teaching or studying tea kaiseki, I would ride my secondhand pistachio-green bicycle to favorite places to capture the fleeting lushness of Kyoto in a sketchbook. With a small box of Niji oil pastels, I would draw things that Zen pots had long ago described in words and I did not want to forget: a pond of yellow iris near a small Buddhist temple; a granite urn in a forest of bamboo; and a blue creek reflecting the beauty of heaven, carrying away a summer snowfall of pink blossoms. Sometimes, I would sit under the shade of a willow tree at the bottom of my street, doing nothing but listening to the call of cuckoos, while reading and munching on carrots and boiled egg halves smeared with mayonnaise and wrapped in crisp sheets of nori. Never before had such simple indulgences brought such immense pleasure.

Soen-sa said, “Do you understand?” The first student shouted “KATZ!!!” Soen-sa said, “Very good. But your understanding is still only conceptual. Sometimes your answers are ‘like this,’ sometimes they show an attachment to emptiness. I will explain the Zen circle once more. At 90° the book is the pencil, the pencil is the book. At 180° you can only answer with a hit or a shout. At 270° the pencil is angry, the book laughs. At 360° the book is blue, the pencil is yellow. Now which one of these four answers is the best?” The student said, “They're all good.” Soen-sa hit him and said, “Today is Saturday.

There comes a point in your sitting when insights about yourself will flash into your mind. For example, relationships that previously were incomprehensible will suddenly be clarified and difficult personal problems abruptly solved. If you don’t jot down things that you want to remember, this could bother you and so interfere with your concentration. For this reason when you are sitting by yourself you may want to keep a pencil and notebook next to you.