Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
- George Santayana (1863 – 1952)
a collection of minutiae
named fear
Named must your fear be before banish it you can.
- Yoda
Shelter from the storm
‘Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
“Come in,” she said,
“I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”
Nameless and formless
Nameless and formless,
I leave birth-and-death.
- Layman P’ang (740 – 808)
No man is an island
All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated.
only the heart can see rightly
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential
is invisible to the eye.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944)
Jewels
If I should see your eyes again,
I know how far their look would go –
Back to a morning in the park
With sapphire shadows on the snow.
Or back to oak trees in the spring
When you unloosed my hair and kissed
The head that lay against your knees
In the leaf shadow’s amethyst.
always zen
Zen students are with their masters at least ten years before they presume to teach others. Nan-in was visited by Tenno, who, having passed his apprenticeship, had become a teacher. The day happened to be rainy, so Tenno wore wooden clogs and carried an umbrella. After greeting him Nan-in remarked: “I suppose you left your wodden clogs in the vestibule. I want to know if your umbrella is on the right or left side of the clogs.”