The ego wants to want, more than it wants to have.

~Eckhart Tolle
@GatelessGate

The human condition: lost in thought.

~Eckhart Tolle
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It is beautiful to be alone, it is also beautiful to to be in love, to be with people. And they are complementary, not contradictory.

~OSHO
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Vast emptiness, nothing holy.

~Bodhidharma
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Forgiveness separates the dreamer from the evil dream and thus releases him.

~A Course In Miracles
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It is the sharing of the evil dreams of hate and malice, bitterness and death, of sin and suffering and pain and loss, that makes them real. Unshared, they are perceived as meaningless. The fear is gone from them because you did not give them your support. Where fear has gone, there love must come because there are but these alternatives. Where one appears, the other disappears. And which you share becomes the only one you have. You have the one which you accept, because it is the only one you wish to have.

~A Course In Miracles
@GatelessGate

Stop thinking, and end your problems.What difference between yes and no?What difference between success and failure?Must you value what others value,avoid what others avoid?How ridiculous!Other people are excited,as though they were at a parade.I alone don't care,I alone am expressionless,like an infant before it can smile.Other people have what they need;I alone possess nothing.I alone drift about,like someone without a home.I am like an idiot, my mind is so empty.Other people are bright;I alone am dark.Other people are sharp;I alone am dull.Other people have purpose;I alone don't know.I drift like a wave on the ocean,I blow as aimless as the wind.

~Lao Tzu
@GatelessGate

Those who are courageous, go headlong. They search all opportunities of danger. Their life philosophy is not that of insurance companies. Their life philosophy is that of a mountain climber, a glider, a surfer. And not only in the outside seas they surf; they surf in their innermost seas. And not only on the outside they climb Alps and Himalayas; they seek inner peaks. But remember one thing: never forget the art of risking, never, never. Always remain capable of risking. Wherever you can find an opportunity to risk, never miss it, and you will never be a loser. Risk is the only guarantee for being truly alive.

~OSHO
@GatelessGate

A fool sees himself as another, but a wise man sees others as himself.

~Dogen
@GatelessGate

Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.

~Bodhidharma
@GatelessGate

Life is a pilgrimage, and unless love is attained, it remains a pilgrimage, never reaching anywhere.

~OSHO
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As long as you are crawling like a snake on this earth do not hope to swim like fish in the sea of Spirit.

~Rumi
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When your consciousness is healthy, you don't know anything about yourself. You dont go on reminding yourself that 'I am something.' You just relax.

~OSHO
@GatelessGate

A man was standing on a hilltop. Three persons saw him; they started arguing about him, about what he was doing there. One said 'He must have lost his cow - I know that man - and he must be looking for his cow from the hilltop.' And the second said 'I cannot agree, because when one is looking for something one does not stand like a statue, unmoving; one moves, looks this way and that. But he is just standing like a Buddha-statue He is not looking for something - he is waiting. Maybe a friend has come with him for a morning walk and is left behind and he is waiting for him to come.'

The third said 'I disagree, because when somebody waits for somebody who has been left behind, once in a while he looks back to see whether he has come or not. But that man is not looking back at all; he is not even moving. He is not waiting. My feeling is that he is meditating.'

They could not agree on what that man was doing so they decided to go to the man and enquire. The first man said 'Are you looking for your cow?' The man said 'No, I am not looking for anything.' The second said 'Then I must be right: you must be waiting for your friend who has been left behind?'

The man said 'No, I am not waiting for anybody.' The third said 'Then I have to be right - now there is no other alternative left - you must be meditating.' And the man said 'No, I am not meditating either.' Then all three asked 'Then what are you doing?' He said 'I am just standing.'

~Zen Story
@GatelessGate

If a man puts a gosling in the bottle and feeds it until it is full-grown, how can the man get the goose out without killing it or breaking the bottle?

💎Zen Kōan💎
@GatelessGate

Great Waves

In the early days of the Meiji era there lived a well-known wrestler called O-nami, Great Waves.
O-nami was immensly strong and knew the art of wresting. In his private bouts he defeated even his teacher, but in public was so bashful that his own pupils threw him.
O-nami felt he should go to a Zen master for help. Hakuju, a wandering teacher, was stopping in a little temple nearby, so O-nami went to see him and told him of his great trouble.
"Great Waves is your name," the teacher advised, "so stay in this temple tonight. Imagine that you are those billows. You are no longer a wrestler who is afraid. You are those huge waves sweeping everything before them, swallowing all in their path. Do this and you will be the greatest wrestler in the land."
The teacher retired. O-nami sat in meditation trying to imagine himself as waves. He thought of many different things. Then gradualy he turned more and more to the feeling of waves. As the night advanced the waves became larger and larger. They swept away the flowers in their vases. Even the Buddha in the shrine was inundated. Before dawn the temple was nothing but the ebb and flow of an immense sea.
In the morning the teacher found O-nami meditating, a faint smile on his face. He patted the wrestler's shoulder. "Now nothing can disturb you," he said. "You are those waves. You will sweep everything before you."
The same day O-nami entered the wrestling contests and won. After that, no one in Japan was able to defeat him.

~Zen Story
@GatelessGate

You are in prison. If you wish to get out of prison, the first thing you must do is realize that you are in prison. If you think you are free, you can't escape.

~George Ivanovich Gurdjieff
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Ancient pond. Frog jump in. plop!

~Haiku
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Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing in it to steal.

Ryokan returned and caught him. “You may have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you shoud not return emptyhanded. Please take my clothes as a gift.”

The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.

Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. “Poor fellow,” he mused, “I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.”

~Zen Story
@GatelessGate

Stupidity has always the shadow of meanness. The more intelligent you are, the less mean you are. The utterly intelligent person cannot have any meanness; it is impossible. He can have only love and compassion. The stupid person has to be mean because that is the only way he thinks he can win. The intelligent person has no desire to win, the intelligent person is already victorious in his intelligence. The intelligent person is already superior in his intelligence, he has not to compete for it. The stupid person has to continuously compete. And because he is stupid, he cannot rely on his intelligence, he has to rely on something else: he becomes mean, cunning, deceptive, a hypocrite. To me, stupidity is the only sin, and everything else is just a by-product of it. And intelligence is the only virtue; everything else that we have known as virtue follows it like a shadow.

~OSHO
@GatelessGate

One day a young Buddhist on his journey home came to the banks of a wide river. Staring hopelessly at the great obstacle in front of him, he pondered for hours on just how to cross such a wide barrier.

Just as he was about to give up his pursuit to continue his journey he saw a great teacher on the other side of the river. The young Buddhist yells over to the teacher, “Oh wise one, can you tell me how to get to the other side of this river”?

The teacher ponders for a moment looks up and down the river and yells back, “My son, you are on the other side”.

~Zen Story
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