Zen a day - Mar 24

Wednesday 19 March 2008
Misty rain on Mount Lu,
and waves surging in Che-chiang.
When you have not yet been there,
many a regret surely you have;
but once there and heading homeward,
how matter-of-fact everything looks!
Misty rain on Mount Lu,
and waves surging in Che-chiang.
- Su tung-p'o

Thursday 20 March 2008
Lung-ya asked the master, Te-shan, "If I threaten to cut your head off with the sharpest sword I could find, what would you do?"
The master pulled his head in.
Lung-ya said, Your head is off!"
Later, Lung-ya came to Tung-shan and told of this episode. Tung-shan asked, "What did Te-shan say?"
Lung-ya: "He said nothing!"
Tung-shan said, "He said nothing? Then show me the head you cut off!"
Lung-ya acknowledged his fault and apologized. Later, someone reported the story back to Te-shan, who remarked, "Old Tung-shan has no judgment. That Lung-ya had been dead for some time - What is the use of trying to save him?"
- Zen story

Friday 21 March 2008
One day Chuang-tzu and a friend were walking along a riverbank.
"How delightfully the fishes are enjoying themselves in the water!" Chuang-tzu exclaimed.
"You are not a fish," his friend said. "How so you know whether or not the fishes are enjoying themselves?"
"You are not me," Chuang-tzu said. "How do you know that I do not know that the fishes are enjoying themselves?"
- Taoist mondo

Saturday 22 March 2008
You come into the world alone and you go out of the world alone, yet is seems to me you are more alone while living than even coming and going.
- Emily Carr

Sunday 23 March 2008
The old lady East of me got rich and now laughs that I don't have money. I laugh that she's gotten ahead. Both of us laughing, East and West.
- Han-shan

Monday 24 March 2008
The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.
- Albert Einstein

Tuesday 25 March 2008
"You are such a saintly person," Chao-chou was told. "Where will you go after death?"
"I wil go to hell ahead of you all," Chao-chou replied.
The questioner, taken aback, said, "How could that be?"
"Without my first going to hell, who would be waiting there to save people like you?"
- Zen mondo