The Sweetest Strawberry: by Zen Koan

The Sweetest Strawberry:
by Zen Koan

The True Path is the path on which
there is no coming and no going.
- Traditional Zen Koan

Overflowing Cup of Tea:
The Zen Master poured his visitor's teacup full, and then kept pouring.
The visitor watched until he could no longer restrain himself.
"It is overfull. No more will go in!"
"Like this cup," the Zen Master said,
"you are full of your own opinions and assumptions.
How can you learn truth until you first empty your cup?"
- Traditional Zen Koan

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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The Moon Cannot Be Stolen:
A thief entered the little hut of a Zen Master,
but discovered there was nothing to steal.
The Zen Master discovered the thief.
"You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler,
"and you should not return empty-handed.
Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered,
but he took the clothes and slunk away.
The Zen Master sat naked, watching the moon.
"Poor fellow," he mused,
"I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon."
- Traditional Zen Koan

Time to Die:
A Zen teacher had a rare and priceless teacup.
One day, his precocious student accidentally broke the cup.
Hearing the footsteps of his teacher,
the student held the pieces of the cup behind his back.
When the master appeared, he asked: "Why do people have to die?"
"This is natural," explained the teacher.
"Everything has to die and has just so long to live."
The student showed the shattered cup, saying,
"It was time for your cup to die."
- Traditional Zen Koan

Sweetest Lord, make me appreciative
of the dignity of my high vocation,
and its many responsibilities.
Never permit me to disgrace it by giving way
to coldness, unkindness, or impatience.
- Mother Teresa

All things share the same breath -
the beast, the tree, the man...
the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
- Chief Seattle (attributed)

Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Talent is God-given; be humble.
Fame is man-given; be thankful.
Conceit is self-given; be careful.
- John Wooden

No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)

Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln

A man who was completely innocent,
offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others,
including his enemies,
and became the ransom of the world.
It was a perfect act.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

The full measure of a man is
not to be found in the man himself,
but in the colors and textures that
come alive in others because of him.
- Albert Schweitzer

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde

The wise man in the storm prays God,
not for safety from danger,
but for deliverance from fear.
It is the storm within which endangers him,
not the storm without.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man's pride shall bring him low,
but honor shall uphold the humble in spirit.
- Proverbs 29:23

The wise man does not lay up his own treasures.
The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.
- Lao Tzu

Faith is a living and unshakable confidence,
a belief in the grace of God so assured that
a man would die a thousand deaths for its sake.
- Martin Luther

There is One Infinite Mind,
which of necessity includes all that is,
whether it be the intelligence in man,
the life in the animal,
or the invisible Presence which is God.
- Ernest Holmes

If you talk to a man in a language he understands,
that goes to his head.
If you talk to him in his language,
that goes to his heart.
- Nelson Mandela

I wept because I had no shoes
until I met a man who had no feet.
- old Persian Proverb

The fear of death follows from the fear of life.
A man who lives fully, is prepared to die at any time.
- Mark Twain

The mind of man is continuously unfolding
into a greater recognition of its real plan
in the creative order of the Universe.
- Ernest Holmes

Before the throne of the Almighty,
man will be judged not by his acts but by his intentions.
For God alone reads our hearts.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
- William Shakespeare

Feel Unity with Spirit and All Creation
All things share the same breath the
beast, the tree, the man... the air
shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
- Chief Seattle [actually written by screenwriter Ted Perry in 1972]

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man
take which course he will,
he will be sure to repent.
- Socrates

The Divine Plan is one of Freedom.
The inherent nature of man is ever seeking
to express itself in terms of freedom,
because freedom is the birthright of every living soul.
- Ernest Holmes

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man,
but he is brave five minutes longer.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dear Father in heaven, I'm not a praying man,
but if you're up there and you can hear me ...
show me the way... show me the way.
- It's a Wonderful Life (1946 movie)

If the stars should appear
but one night every thousand years
how man would marvel and stare.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

He is a wise man who does not grieve
for the things which he has not,
but rejoices for those which he has.
- Epictetus

When the tempest rages, when the thunders roar,
and the lightnings blaze around us
it is then that the truly brave man stands firm at his post.
- Luther Martin

Every man must decide whether he will
walk in the light of creative altruism
or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Man does not weave this web of life.
He is merely a strand of it.
Whatever he does to the web,
he does to himself.
- Chief Seattle (attributed)

Whenever a man or women is truly inspired,
it is because the same One Universal Spirit
is doing the inspiring.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

For man with no forgiveness in heart,
life worse punishment than death.
- Miyagi: character in the movie Karate Kid 2

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was:
"If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"
But... the good Samaritan reversed the question:
"If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If a man is called to be a street sweeper,
he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted,
or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts
of heaven and earth will pause to say,
here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Two things a man should never be angry at:
what he can help,
and what he cannot help.
- Thomas Fuller

Anger is a killing thing:
it kills the man who angers,
for each rage leaves him less than he had been before -
it takes something from him.
- Louis L'Amour

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear,
but the triumph over it.
The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid,
but he who conquers that fear.
- Nelson Mandela

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl

Every man and woman is born into the world
to do something unique and something distinctive;
and if he or she does not do it,
it will never be done.
- Benjamin E. Mays

Try not to become a man of success,
but rather try to become a man of value.
- Albert Einstein

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed,
and in such desperate enterprises?
If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
- Henry David Thoreau

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day,
teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.
- Chinese Proverb

There is no limit to what a man can do
or where he can go,
if he doesn't mind who gets the credit.
- Robert Woodruff

A man can fail many times,
but he isn't a failure until
he begins to blame somebody else.
- John Burroughs

Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind.
It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction
devised by the ingenuity of man.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

A man is but the product of his thoughts -
what he thinks, he becomes.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Mystery creates wonder, and wonder is the basis
of man's desire to understand.
- Neil Armstrong

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live
that his happiness shall depend
as little as possible on external things.
- Epictetus

We try to realize the essential unity of the world
with the conscious soul of man;
we learn to perceive the unity held together
by the one Eternal Spirit,
whose power creates the earth, the sky, and the stars,
and at the same time irradiates our mind.
- Rabindranath Tagore

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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The Sweetest Strawberry:by Zen Koan

Daily Inspirations

The Sweetest Strawberry:
by Zen Koan