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The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics QUOTES

The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics QUOTES

1 " The one who praises you is a thief. The one who criticizes you is your true friend. "

― Robert Aitken , The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics

2 " Sloppy language is a kind of disloyalty to humanity, a kind of lying. Talent "

― Robert Aitken , The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics

3 " The self is completely autonomous, yet exists only in resonance with all other selves. "

― Robert Aitken , The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics

4 " Once one thinks like a mountain, the whole world is converted. All things confirm me. Then I sit on dojo cushions that do not move. There is no controller and no one to control. "

― Robert Aitken , The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics

5 " We are shown that our life exists with the tree life, that our well-being depends on the well-being of the vegetable life, that we are close relatives of the four-legged beings. In our ways, spiritual consciousness is the highest form of politics.… We believe that all living things are spiritual beings. Spirits can be expressed as energy forms manifested in matter. A blade of grass is an energy form manifested in matter—grass matter. The spirit of the grass is that unseen force which produces the species of grass, and it is manifest to us in the form of real grass.8 This passage is part of the “Haudenosaunee Address to the Western World, "

― Robert Aitken , The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics

6 " You and I come forth as possibilities of essential nature, alone and independent as stars, yet reflecting and being reflected by all things. My life and yours are the unfolding realization of total aloneness and total intimacy. "

― Robert Aitken , The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics

7 " I don’t dream about the President any more, and when I talk to my friends, I find they don’t either. The Great Leader is a hollow man, the Law of the Market cannot prove itself, and the Nation State mocks its own values. "

― Robert Aitken , The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics

8 " Clover is incapable of not nurturing. It can’t do anything but nurture. Shakyamuni is capable of not nurturing. With a poisonous thought, he is a poisonous person. With an enlightened thought, he is an enlightened person. With his great realization, he is unlikely to slip back into poisonous ways, but he could, for he is human. "

― Robert Aitken , The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics