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> 56 quotes tagged "practice"
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When a superior man hears of the Tao, he diligently practices it; when an ordinary man hears of the Tao, he half believes it; when a fool hears of the Tao, he laughs aloud at it.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 41
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In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired; in the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 48
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The Tao is the treasure of the good man, and the refuge of the bad man.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 62
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If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 74
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To practice virtue is to selflessly offer assistance to others, giving without limitation one's time, abilities, and possessions in service. If your willingness to give blessings is limited, so also is your ability to receive them.Hua Hu Jing, Verse 4
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Those who wish to attain oneness must practice undiscriminating virtue. They must dissolve all ideas of duality: good and bad, beautiful and ugly, high and low.Hua Hu Jing, Verse 7
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Regard these teachings with reverence, practice their truths, illuminate them to others. You will receive as many blessings from the universe as there are grains of sand in the River of Timelessness.Hua Hu Jing, Verse 12
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Don't think you can attain total awareness and whole enlightenment without proper discipline and practice. Just as high awareness is gained through virtuous conduct, so also is it maintained through these things.Hua Hu Jing, Verse 29
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Live a quiet and simple life, free of ideas and concepts. Find contentment in the practice of undiscriminating virtue, the only true power. Your virtue becomes a sanctuary for yourself and all beings.Hua Hu Jing, Verse 47
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The four cardinal virtues: reverence for all life, natural sincerity, gentleness, and supportiveness. When practiced, they give birth to wisdom and evoke health, wealth, happiness, longevity, and peace.Hua Hu Jing, Verse 51
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The holistic practices of the ancient masters integrate science, art, and personal spiritual development. Mind, body, and spirit participate in them equally.Hua Hu Jing, Verse 55
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Unless the mind, body, and spirit are equally developed and fully integrated, no spiritual peak or state of enlightenment can be sustained. True self-cultivation involves the holistic integration of mind, body, and spirit.Hua Hu Jing, Verse 58
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Simplify the personality, refine the sexual energy upward, integrate yin and yang in body, mind, and spirit, practice non-impulsiveness, and you will enter the exquisite upper realm.Hua Hu Jing, Verse 63
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Through the practices of the Integral Way, one refines gross, heavy energy into something ethereal and light. The new life created is self-aware yet without ego, capable of inhabiting a body yet not attached to it.Hua Hu Jing, Verse 66
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For those who aspire to the higher realms of living, there is angelic dual cultivation. Angelic intercourse is led by the spirit rather than the sexual organs, culminating not in dissolution but in integration.Hua Hu Jing, Verse 69
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Develop your virtue and extend it to the world. Practice unswerving kindness and unending patience. Avoid following impulses and pursuing ambitions which destroy the wholeness of your mind.Hua Hu Jing, Verse 72
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Those who practice the truth of these teachings will acquire the subtle light of wisdom, the mighty sword of clarity, and the mystical pearl of understanding that envelops the entire universe.Hua Hu Jing, Verse 79
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The true master understands that enlightenment is not the end, but the means. Realizing that virtue is her goal, she accepts the long and often arduous cultivation that is necessary to attain it.Hua Hu Jing, Verse 80
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Take time to listen to what is said without words. Love your life. Trust the Tao. You can be a gentle, contemplative hermit right here in the middle of everything, utterly unaffected, thoroughly sustained by your integral practices.Hua Hu Jing, Verse 81
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After three years, my mind did not venture to reflect on right and wrong.Lieh Tzu, Book 2: The Yellow Emperor
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Build up moral merit and strengthen virtue.T'ai-Shang Kan-Ying P'ien – Moral Injunctions
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How wondrously supernatural, and how miraculous! I draw water, and I carry fuel.Zen Poem – P'ang Yün (740-808 CE)
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The body is the Bodhi-tree. The mind is like a bright mirror standing. Take care to wipe it all the time, and allow no dust to cling.Zen Poem – Shen-hsiu (606-706)
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Don't make a distinction between work and play. Regard everything that you're doing as play, and don't regard for one minute that you have to be serious about it.Alan Watts
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The art of living… is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.Alan Watts
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If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you'll spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing things you don't like doing, which is stupid.Alan Watts
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What happens if you know that there is nothing you can do to be better? It's kind of a relief, isn't it? You say 'Well, now what do I do?' When you are freed from being out to improve yourself, your own nature will begin to take over.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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Education, in the real sense, is not preparation for life, it is actually living. It is the child participating in adult concerns. And doing it now and realizing that the point of the process in which the child is engaged, is not to prepare the child for the future, but to enjoy doing the thing today.Alan Watts
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Peace can be made only by those who are peaceful, and love can be shown only by those who love. No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.Alan Watts
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Attain complete emptiness. Hold firm to stillness. The ten thousand things arise together; in their arising I see their return. They flourish and each returns to its root. Returning to one's roots is known as stillness. Stillness is the return to one's destiny.Tao Te Ching – Chapter 16
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If you listen not with the ear but with the heart; not with the heart but with the breath — then the breath itself is empty and waits on all things. The Way gathers in emptiness alone. Emptiness is the fasting of the heart.Chuang Tzu, Chapter 4 – The Human World
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If a man crosses a river and an empty boat collides with his, even if he is bad-tempered he will not be angry. But if there is a man in that boat, he will shout at him to steer clear. Anger arises when there is someone to blame. Empty your own boat as you cross the river of the world, and nothing can oppose you.Chuang Tzu, Chapter 20 – Mountain Trees
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Prince Hui's cook was cutting up an ox. Every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet was in perfect rhythm — like the dance of the Mulberry Grove. 'I work with my mind and not with my eye,' he said. 'My mind works along without the control of the senses. Falling back upon eternal principles, I glide through the great joints as they are. A good cook changes his chopper once a year — because he cuts. An ordinary cook, once a month — because he hacks. I have used this chopper for nineteen years, yet its edge is still as keen as if fresh from the grindstone. Because I always work in accordance with the natural constitution of the animal.'Chuang Tzu, Chapter 3 – The Secret of Caring for Life
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Duke Huan was reading when Wheelwright Pian put down his chisel and asked: 'What are you reading?' 'The words of the sages.' 'Are they alive?' 'Dead.' 'Then you are reading nothing but their dregs. When I chisel a wheel — too slow, the chisel slides; too fast, it jams. The right pace comes from the hand and is felt in the mind. It cannot be put into words. There is an art to it I cannot teach my own son, and which he cannot learn from me. So here I am, seventy years old, still chiseling wheels.'Chuang Tzu, Chapter 13 – The Way of Heaven
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Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.Zen proverb
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Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step
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The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention.Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step
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People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth.Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness
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Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step
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Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world revolves — slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.Thich Nhat Hanh
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Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.Thich Nhat Hanh, Present Moment Wonderful Moment
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Our own life has to be our message.Thich Nhat Hanh
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You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.Thich Nhat Hanh
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To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don't need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.Thich Nhat Hanh
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Smile, breathe, and go slowly.Thich Nhat Hanh
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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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The most important thing is to find out what is the most important thing.Shunryu Suzuki
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When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
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Leave your front door and your back door open. Allow your thoughts to come and go. Just don't serve them tea.Shunryu Suzuki
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Our way is to practice one step at a time, one breath at a time, with no gaining idea.Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
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To study the self is to forget the self.Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
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Do you have the poems of Han-shan in your house? They're better for you than sutra-reading! Paste them up on your screen. From time to time take a look.Han Shan, Cold Mountain Poems
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When you are hungry, eat. When you are tired, sleep.Book of Serenity — Baizhang
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If you students of the Way do not awake to this Mind substance, you will overlay Mind with conceptual thought, you will seek Buddha outside yourselves, and you will remain attached to forms, practices, and so on, all of which are harmful and not at all the way to supreme knowledge.Huang Po, The Zen Teaching of Huang Po, tr. John Blofeld
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Beginning students of the Way often hear it said that there is fundamentally nothing to be attained. But hearing this, they jump to the conclusion that it means complete inactivity — that sitting blankly will do.Huang Po, The Zen Teaching of Huang Po, tr. John Blofeld