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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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]

Take a chance! All life is a chance.
The man who goes farthest is generally
the one who is willing to do and dare.
- Dale Carnegie

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

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready
for his opportunity when it comes.
- Benjamin Disraeli

A man can succeed at almost anything
for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.
- Charles M. Schwab

When I am getting ready to reason with a man,
I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself
and what I am going to say
and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.
- Abraham Lincoln

The eyes of the cheerful and of the melancholy man
are fixed upon the same creation;
but very different are the aspects which it bears to them.
- Albert Pike

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands
in moments of comfort and convenience,
but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right.
Men will believe what they see.
- Henry David Thoreau

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand,
the spines of others are often stiffened.
- Billy Graham

You cannot build character and courage by
taking away a man's initiative and independence.
- Abraham Lincoln

Well, I don't know what will happen now.
We've got some difficult days ahead.
But it doesn't matter with me now.
Because I've been to the mountaintop.
And I don't mind. Like any man,
I would like to live a long life.
Longevity has its place.
But I'm not concerned about that now.
I just want to do God's will.
And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain.
And I've looked over.
And I've seen the promised land.
I may not get there with you.
But I want you to know tonight, that we,
as a people, will get to the promised land.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life,
he will lose his reverence for all of life.
- Albert Schweitzer

Any man who reads too much
and uses his own brain too little
falls into lazy habits of thinking.
- Albert Einstein

No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing,
and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.
- George Bernard Shaw

When you are offended at any man's fault,
turn to yourself and study your own failings.
Then you will forget your anger.
- Epictetus

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid
as getting to know how enormously much
he is capable of doing and becoming.
- Soren Kierkegaard

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing,
and that is that I know nothing.
- Socrates

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance;
the wise grows it under his feet.
- J. Robert Oppenheimer

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

Money has never made man happy, nor will it,
there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness.
The more of it one has the more one wants.
- Benjamin Franklin

It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe,
that lures him to evil ways.
- The Buddha

Is the babe young? When I behold it,
it seems more venerable than the oldest man.
- Henry David Thoreau

If a man loses pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears,
however measured or far away.
- Henry David Thoreau

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

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)

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers.
You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
- Naguib Mahfouz

There are other measures of self-respect for a man,
than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man's good name is his best monument
- from an old churchyard at Lockerbie, Scotland

Man must evolve for all human conflict,
a method which rejects
revenge, aggression and retaliation.
The foundation of such a method is love.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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

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

During the first period of a man's life
the greatest danger is not to take the risk.
- Soren Kierkegaard

A man can do only what he can do.
But if he does that each day he can sleep at night
and do it again the next day.
- Albert Schweitzer

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The Sweetest Strawberry:by Zen Koan

Quotes and Sayings

The Sweetest Strawberry:
by Zen Koan