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

Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore

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)

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

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

Talent is God-given; be humble.
Fame is man-given; be thankful.
Conceit is self-given; be careful.
- John Wooden

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

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

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.

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

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

Every man must decide whether he will
walk in the light of creative altruism
or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you talk to a man in a language he understands,
that goes to his head.
If you talk to him in his language,
that goes to his heart.
- Nelson Mandela

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear,
but the triumph over it.
The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid,
but he who conquers that fear.
- Nelson Mandela

The fear of death follows from the fear of life.
A man who lives fully, is prepared to die at any time.
- Mark Twain

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

Anger is a killing thing:
it kills the man who angers,
for each rage leaves him less than he had been before -
it takes something from him.
- Louis L'Amour

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.

He is a wise man who does not grieve
for the things which he has not,
but rejoices for those which he has.
- Epictetus

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

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.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man,
but he is brave five minutes longer.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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)

If the stars should appear
but one night every thousand years
how man would marvel and stare.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

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]

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

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

If thou wilt make a man happy,
add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.
- Epicurus

Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind.
It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction
devised by the ingenuity of man.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

A man is a success if he gets up in
the morning and gets to bed at night,
and in between he does what he wants to do.
- Bob Dylan

A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences,
in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures -
and that is the basis of all human morality.
- John F. Kennedy

If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for,
he isn't fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Divine Plan is one of Freedom.
The inherent nature of man is ever seeking
to express itself in terms of freedom,
because freedom is the birthright of every living soul.
- Ernest Holmes

A man is not old until his regrets take the place of his dreams.
- Yiddish Proverb

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 quality of a man's life is in direct proportion
to his commitment to excellence,
regardless of his chosen field of endeavor.
- Vince Lombardi

It is what a man thinks of himself
that really determines his fate.
- Henry David Thoreau

Non-violence is a powerful and just weapon which cuts without wounding
and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be,
at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

There is a sufficiency in the world
for man's need but not for man's greed.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Try not to become a man of success,
but rather try to become a man of value.
- Albert Einstein

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys
the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist,
and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.
- Albert Schweitzer

Man does not weave this web of life.
He is merely a strand of it.
Whatever he does to the web,
he does to himself.
- Chief Seattle (attributed)

I submit to you that if a man hasn't
discovered something that he will die for,
he isn't fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought,
happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
- The Buddha

Man falls from the pursuit of the ideal
of plain living and high thinking
the moment he wants to multiply his daily wants.
Man's happiness really lies in contentment.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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The Sweetest Strawberry:by Zen Koan

The Sweetest Strawberry:
by Zen Koan