In Zazen, One Is One's

When We Are Mired In The Relative World, Never Lifting Our Gaze To The Mystery, Our Life Is Stunted, Incomplete; We Are Filled With Yearning For That Paradise That Is Lost When, As Young Children, We Replace It With Words And Ideas And Abstractions - Such As Merit, Such As Past, Present, And Future - Our Direct, Spontaneous Experience Of The Thing Itself, In The Beauty And Precision Of This Present Moment.

I Was Just Very Interested In The American Frontier And The Growth Of Capitalism - Those Enormous Fortunes That Were Being Made, More Often Than Not, On The Blood Of Poor People, Black People, Indian People. They Were The Ones Who Paid Very Dearly For Those Great Fortunes.

My Eye Is Fixed Not On The Ending Of The Book But On The Feeling Of That Ending.

The Concept Of Conservation Is A Far Truer Sign Of Civilization Than That Spoilation Of A Continent Which We Once Confused With Progress.

I Can Watch Elephants (and Elephants Alone) For Hours At A Time, For Sooner Or Later The Elephant Will Do Something Very Strange... There Is Mystery Behind That Masked Gray Visage, And Ancient Life Force, Delicate And Mighty, Awesome And Enchanted, Commanding The Silence Ordinarily Reserved For Mountain Peaks, Great Fires, And The Sea.