Bill Porter famous quotes

Every place is a place to practice. Every time is a time to practice. Zen is concerned with the thought we have this moment rather than with rituals or rules of behavior
-- Bill Porter

#Time #Practice #Moments

When you're blind to your own nature, the Buddha is an ordinary being. When you're aware of your own nature, an ordinary being is the Buddha.
-- Bill Porter

#Nature #Ordinary #Blind

In the face of impermanence, if your next thought is good, this is what we call the realization body.
-- Bill Porter

#Realization #Body #Next

Reading texts is no substitute for meditation and practicing Zen. If you read a book about a place, and you want to go there, you don't keep reading the book. You have to travel. That's what practice is about. Traveling. Walking the path.
-- Bill Porter

#Travel #Book #Reading

When you are free of form and not confused, you are focused. To be free of form externally is 'Zen.' Not to be confused internally is 'meditation.' External Zen and internal meditation, this is what we mean by 'Zen meditation.
-- Bill Porter

#Confused #Mean #Meditation

The world has no hold on you. Whatever has a hold on you comes from your mind.
-- Bill Porter

#Mind #World

This building we're in has doors and windows. If we close the doors and windows, we can't get out. People lock themselves inside a house of delusions. But they're only delusions. They can leave anytime. Actually there is no house to leave. There's not even any leaving. What we see are flowers in the sky, the moon in the water. As for the meditative powers of Zen masters like Hsu-yun, sometimes it's useful to meditate and sometimes it isn't.
-- Bill Porter

#Flower #Moon #Doors

There is so much baggage we burden ourselves with over the years that keeps us from seeing things the way they are. Some baggage we carry with us for a single thought, some for years, and some for lifetimes. But there isn't one piece that isn't our own creation.
-- Bill Porter

#Years #Pieces #Baggage

Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's aware that will not keep. Up, lad: when the journey's over then there'll be time enough to sleep.

The absolutely Non-Manifested cannot be designated by any expression which could limit It, Separate It, or include It. In spite of this, every allusion alludes only to Him, every designation designates Him, and He is at the same time the Non-Manifested and the Manifested.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.

No one can escape stress, but you can learn to cope with it. Practice positive thinking. . . seize control in small ways.

I dedicate myself and work hard in the weight room and treat every practice as if it were a game.

The practice mirror is to be used for the correction of faults, not for a love affair, and the figure you watch should not become your dearest friend.

I don't like the word 'experiment' in the context of art in general. It implies something immature, unfinished, something entertaining for a moment before it becomes irrelevant.

I just had one of those 'what the hell are we doing' moments.

One by one the sands are flowing, One by one the moments fall; Some are coming, some are going; Do not strive to grasp them all.