Zengriff-v2 - Zengriff

You’re never too old to learn something new. Never stop studying. 

"Because Zen seekers are searching too eagerly, they think there must be a special principle, so they try to describe it to themselves mentally, in a subjective way. Thus they are swept by the machinations of emotive and intellectual conciousness into something that is created and will perish." - Yingan Tanhua (1103-1163)

Japanese Imperial Palace photos: Sam Abell

How do you let go of attachment to things? Don’t even try. It’s impossible. Attachment to things drops away by itself when you no longer seek to find yourself in them.

Eckhart Tolle

“When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree. The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’ That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.”

— Ram Dass

“When you have Yin you must have Yang, when you have Yang you must have Yin, they mutually kind of compliment each other. For instance you cannot succeed without failure. If you always succeed you can’t succeed any more. You’ve got to have some failure in order to succeed, it’s all relative. So then perhaps a good way to relieve anxiety. Today for instance, we are so much troubled with anxiety. Perhaps this is the way.”

~ Gia-fu Feng

Every time you want to quit but keep going, you pass a checkpoint in life.

Steven Handel, The Emotion Machine: Self-Improvement in the 21st Century

You have to stop ruining things for yourself preemptively because you believe they’ll fail anyway. Give yourself a chance to succeed.