Quotes

"Your reverence", asked Huai-jang, "what is the objective of sitting meditation?"
"The objective," answered Ma-tsu, "is to become a Buddha."
Thereupon Huai-jang picked up a floor-tile and began to polish it on a rock.
"What are you doing, master?" asked Ma-tsu.
"I'm polishing it for a mirror", said Huai-jang.
"How could polishing a tile make a mirror?"
"How could sitting in meditation make a Buddha?"

"The perfect Way [Tao] is without difficulty,
Save that it avoids picking and choosing.
Only when you stop liking and disliking
Will all be clearly understood.
A split hair's difference,
And heaven and earth are set apart!
It you want to get the plain truth,
Be not concerned with right and wrong.
The conflict between right and wrong
Is the sickness of the mind." Seng-ts'an

"When everyone recognizes beauty as beautiful,
there is already ugliness;
When everyone recognizes goodness as good,
there is already evil.
"To be" and "not to be" arise mutually;
Difficult and easy are mutually realized;
Long and short are mutually contrasted;
High and low are mutually posited;
Before and after are mutually sequence."

The illusion of significant improvement arises in moments of contrast, as when one turns from the left to right on a hard bed. The position is better so long as the contrast remains, but before long the second position begins to feel like the first. The vacuum arises because the sensation of comfort can be maintained only in relation to the relation of discomfort, just as an image is visible to the eye only by reason of a contrasting the background. The good and evil, the pleasant and the painful are so inseparable, so identical in their difference-like the two sides of a coin. [...]
Zen has no goal. A world which increasingly consists of destinations without journeys between them, a world which values only "getting somewhere" as fast as possible, becomes a world without substance. One can get anywhere and everywhere, and yet the more this is possible, the less is anywhere and everywhere worth getting to. For points of arrival are too abstract, too Euclidean to be enjoyed, and it is as very much like eating the precise ends of a banana without getting what lies in between. [...]
In swordsmanship one must not first decide upon a certain thrust and then attempt to make it since by that time it will be too late. Decision and action must be simultaneous. [...]
In archery, the releasing of the bowstring had to be done "unintentionally", then the arrow would shoot itself." Alan Watts in "The way of zen"

Max Planck said: “Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”

"How can one prevent a drop of water from ever drying up ?
By throwing it into the sea." Samsara (2001)