I spent a week at a Buddhist monastic retreat, where I sat silently for hours at a time in an uncomfortable position trying to shatter my ego. Why bother? Two minutes with my wife and kids does the same thing. —Brian Koffman More about this quote Tags: humor silence ego discomfort Buddhism Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Then the cook enters and approaches our table. He bows low before me. He is grateful to me, he explains, because since his years as a cook in a Buddhist monastery, he has had little opportunity to cook vegetarian food for anyone who appreciates it. The wild mushrooms, he tells me, were picked in a nearby forest. The greens are from gardens known for the quality of their vegetables. . . . He bows slowly, and thanks me once again. I stumble over my own words of gratitude as he quietly disappears into the kitchen. I never see him again. I didn't sleep that night. The cook's reverence and humility sliced through years of protective hardness and caught me without warning. His food was saturated with love, and its nurturance was almost too much to bear. —Anne Scott More about this quote Tags: love gratitude humility food Buddhism Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
In the Buddhist view, I depend on you for my existence. All things depend on each other, equally. Welcome to the doctrine of dependent origination. It's teeter-totter metaphysics—I arise, you arise; you arise, I arise. Forget about our presumed Maker, the divine machinist in the sky. Take a look at this moment right now. You are you because you are not something else; therefore, what you are not—the chair beneath you, the air in your lungs, these words—births you through an infinity of opposites. It's like the ultimate Dr. Seuss riddle: Without all the things that are not you, who would you be you to? There's no Higher Power in this system to grab on to for support; we are all already supporting each other. Pull a person or people the wrong way and you immediately redefine yourself in light of what you've done to your neighbor. —Shozan Jack Haubner in Zen Confidential: Confessions of a Wayward Monk More about this quote Tags: reality God time Buddhism dependent origination metaphysics Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Buddhism is not a refuge from life. It is life stripped bare and known most intimately. Zen doesn't make you a "better person." It helps you become fully human. My mentor was no model for how to behave perfectly but for how to experience completely. He never told me how to live my life. He just helped me become alive. —Shozan Jack Haubner in Zen Confidential: Confessions of a Wayward Monk More about this quote Tags: life perfection experience intimacy Buddhism self-improvement Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
They want to hear that Buddhism is the answer to all of their problems, not a big fat arrow pointing to the source of all of their problems: ego. —Shozan Jack Haubner in Zen Confidential: Confessions of a Wayward Monk More about this quote Tags: ego answers Buddhism Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Zen attacks that one last thing you hold dear: your precious self-conception. It unravels any notion of a freestanding, unconditional "I" and shows it to be a lie, a fabrication, a construction. True realization, the old masters tell us, takes bone-crushing effort. We pulverize the very skeleton of ego—upon which the meat and skin and organs of our illusions hang—and we do it through intense, hurtle-yourself-off-the-cliffs-and-into-the-chasm practice. —Shozan Jack Haubner in Zen Confidential: Confessions of a Wayward Monk More about this quote Tags: perception effort Buddhism Zen self-conception I Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Zen is like chemotherapy for me. It's brutal medicine that makes you go bald, but it beats the alternative. —Shozan Jack Haubner in Zen Confidential: Confessions of a Wayward Monk More about this quote Tags: brutality Buddhism medicine Zen cancer Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email