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> 50 quotes tagged "paradox"
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The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 1
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Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness. All can know good as good only because there is evil.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 2
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Thirty spokes share the hub’s hub‑ness; It is the centre hole that makes the wagon move.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 11
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Look, it cannot be seen; It is beyond form. Listen, it cannot be heard; It is beyond sound.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 14
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When the great Tao is forgotten, goodness and piety appear.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 18
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Yield and overcome; Bend and be straight. Empty and be full; Wear out and be new.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 22
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The Tao is forever undefined; Small though it is in the unhewn block, No one in the world can master it.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 32
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Reversing things is the movement of the Tao.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 36
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In harmony with the Tao, the sky is clear and spacious; the earth is firm and full.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 39
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Turning back is how the Tao moves; weak is stronger than strong.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 40
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The Tao gives birth to one. One gives birth to two; two gives birth to three; three gives birth to the ten thousand things.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 42
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Great perfection seems incomplete, yet its utility is inexhaustible.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 45
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Kyogen said, 'It is like a man up in a tree hanging from a branch with his mouth. His hands grasp no branch, his feet rest on no limb. Someone appears beneath the tree and asks, "What is the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the West?" If he does not answer, he fails. If he does answer, he falls and loses his life. What should he do?'Mumonkan, Case 5
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Goso asked, 'When you meet a Zen master on the road, you cannot speak to him, you cannot face him in silence. What will you do?'Mumonkan, Case 36
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It's like a person hanging in a tree by his teeth over a precipice. His hands grasp no branch, his feet rest on no limb. Someone under the tree asks him, 'Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?' If he doesn't answer, he fails. If he does answer, he falls to his death. What should he do?Blue Cliff Record, Case 5
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A monk asked, 'When the tortoise has no hair and the rabbit has no horns, how do you understand this?' Hsueh Feng said, 'To have a head is to have horns, to have a shell is to have hair.'Traditional Zen
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To be at will either bright or obscure, soft or hard...this it is to be devoid of knowledge, yet all-knowing.Lieh Tzu, Book 1: Cosmogony
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What you want is that your dreams should be as pleasant as your waking moments. But that is beyond your power to compass.Lieh Tzu, Book 3: Dreams
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Genuine renown requires disinterestedness, which demands poverty, and demands unostentatiousness, which necessitates humble station. The very conditions needed for authentic fame are those society typically scorns.Yang Chu's Garden of Pleasure, Ch. 1
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Virtuous figures endured misery while gaining lasting reputation, yet villains enjoyed pleasure despite posthumous condemnation—both outcomes prove equally meaningless in death.Yang Chu's Garden of Pleasure, Ch. 13
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Loyalty cannot set the sovereign at ease. Righteousness cannot help the world. Pursuing these virtues may actually endanger one's own wellbeing rather than benefit society.Yang Chu's Garden of Pleasure, Ch. 19
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He who does not use; but later the non-use gives use: he knows, because he does not know: and afterwards the non-knowing leads to knowing.Huai Nan Tzu, Essay 2
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The non-knowledge of Exhaustless is the more profound; knowledge is superficial; non-knowledge knows the intrinsic, but knowledge only the extrinsic.Huai Nan Tzu, Essay 5
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In humility you will find salvation; in bending you will find freedom. Submission and yielding paradoxically liberate leaders.Huai Nan Tzu, Essay 5
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Empty-handed, I hold a hoe. Walking, I ride a water buffalo. A man passes over a bridge: the bridge flows, the water does not.Zen Poem – Fu Ta-shih (497-569)
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The blue mountains are constantly walking. The stone woman gives birth to a child in the night.Zen Poem – Dōgen (1200-1253)
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Here are my three treasures. Guard and keep them! The first is pity; the second, frugality; the third, refusal to be foremost of all things under heaven. For only he that pities is truly able to be brave; Only he that is frugal is able to be profuse. Only he that refuses to be foremost of all things is truly able to become chief of all Ministers.Tao Te Ching, Chapter 67
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No one is more dangerously insane than one who is sane all the time: he is like a steel bridge without flexibility, and the order of his life is rigid and brittle.Alan Watts
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Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal, for the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it exists forever….Alan Watts
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Really, the fundamental, ultimate mystery — the only thing you need to know to understand the deepest metaphysical secrets — is this: that for every outside there is an inside and for every inside there is an outside, and although they are different, they go together.Alan Watts
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Like too much alcohol, self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double, and we make the double image for two selves – mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous. Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering.Alan Watts
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Only those who have cultivated the art of living completely in the present have any use for making plans for the future, for when the plans mature they will be able to enjoy the results.Alan Watts
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Paradoxical as it may seem, the purposeful life has no content, no point. It hurries on and on, and misses everything. Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing, for it is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world.Alan Watts
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We join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that makes the wagon move. We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want. We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable. We work with being, but non-being is what we use.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 11
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Thirty spokes converge upon a single hub; it is on the hole in the centre that the use of the cart hinges. Shape clay into a vessel; it is the space within that makes it useful. Cut doors and windows for a room; it is the holes which make it useful. Therefore profit comes from what is there; usefulness from what is not there.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 11
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Return is the movement of the Tao. Yielding is the way of the Tao. The ten thousand things are born of being. Being is born of not-being.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 40
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Great perfection seems incomplete; yet its use is not impaired. Great fullness seems empty; yet its use is inexhaustible. Great straightness seems crooked. Great skill seems clumsy. Great eloquence seems silent.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 45
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Everyone knows the usefulness of what is useful, but no one knows the usefulness of what is useless.Chuang Tzu, Chapter 4 – The Human World
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A man is born gentle and weak. At his death he is hard and stiff. Green plants are tender and filled with sap. At their death they are withered and dry. Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death. The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 76
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Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it. The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid. Everyone knows this is true, but few can put it into practice.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 78
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The softest thing in the universe overcomes the hardest. That which has no substance enters where there is no space. Through this I know the value of non-action. Teaching without words, working without effort — few in the world can grasp this.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 43
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Yield and overcome. Bend and be straight. Empty and be full. Wear out and be new. Have little and gain. Have much and be confused. Therefore the sage embraces the One and becomes a model for the world. He does not put himself on display, and therefore shines. He does not justify himself, and therefore is distinguished. He does not boast, and therefore has merit. He does not contend, and therefore no one can contend with him.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 22
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Each of you is perfect the way you are ... and you can use a little improvement.Shunryu Suzuki
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Men ask the way to Cold Mountain. Cold Mountain: there's no through trail. In summer, ice doesn't melt. The rising sun blurs in swirling fog. How did I make it? My heart's not the same as yours. If your heart was like mine You'd get it and be right here.Han Shan, Cold Mountain Poems, tr. Gary Snyder
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My mind is like the autumn moon Shining clean and clear in the green pool. No, that's not a good comparison. Tell me, how shall I explain?Han Shan, Cold Mountain Poems
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If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.Blue Cliff Record — Linji
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Three pounds of flax.Blue Cliff Record, Case 12 — Tung-shan's Three Pounds of Flax
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A monk asked Zhaozhou, 'Does a dog have Buddha nature?' Zhaozhou said, 'Mu.'Book of Serenity, Case 18 — Zhaozhou's Dog
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The whole world is medicine. What am I?Blue Cliff Record, Case 87 — Yunmen's Medicine and Sickness
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Before the donkey has left, the horse has already arrived.Blue Cliff Record, Case 97