Thomas Hoover Quotes

• “I was at the famous Shiva temple of Brihadishwari in Tanjore,”

  Thomas Hoover

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• “When we act on our spontaneous judgment, we are almost always better off.”

  Thomas Hoover

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• “Being natural means to exist spontaneously without having to take any action.”

  Thomas Hoover

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• “The master Wen-yu summed it up when he answered a demand for the First Principle of Ch'an with, "If words could tell you, it would become the Second Principle.”

  Thomas Hoover

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• “carries on as though it really does exist, dualities and all? Quite simply, Zen would have you treat the physical world exactly as followers of Western religions sometimes treat the spiritual world—as a convenient fiction whose phenomena you honor as though they existed, although you know all the while that they are illusions. The world of strife and relative values may trouble those who mistake it for the real thing, but the Zen-man echoes the words of Hamlet, "We that have free souls, it touches us not." The world is in fact meaningless. It is one's mind that is moving.”

  Thomas Hoover

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• “Symmetrical art is a closed form, perfect in itself and frozen in completeness; asymmetrical art invites the observer in, to expand his imagination and to become part of the process of creation.”

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• “How do you see things so clearly?" with the seeming one-liner, "I close my eyes"?”

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• “All that was worth handing on died with them; the rest, they put into their books.8”

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• “It's funny, but after you break up a family, no matter how dysfunctional, you start repressing the bad memories. But then something comes along to remind you all over again.”

  Thomas Hoover

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• “There is nothing lacking in you, and you yourself are no different from the Buddha. There is no way of achieving Buddhahood other than letting your mind be free to be itself. You should not contemplate nor should you purify your mind. Let there be no craving and hatred, and have no anxiety or fear. Be boundless and absolutely free from all conditions. Be free to go in any direction you like. Do not act to do good, nor to pursue evil. Whether you walk or stay, sit or lie down, and whatever you see happen to you, all are the wonderful activity of the Great Enlightened One. It is all joy, free from anxiety—it is called Buddha.”

  Thomas Hoover

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• “The koan describes three monks watching a banner flutter in the breeze. One monk observes, "The banner is moving," but the second insists, "The wind is moving.”

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• “the only way to really understand the message is to stop trying to "understand" it.”

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• “The right pace, neither slow nor fast, cannot get into the hand unless it comes from the heart.”

  Thomas Hoover

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• “That end is an intuitive realization of a single great insight—that we and the world around are one, both part of a larger encompassing absolute. Our rational intellect merely obscures this truth, and consequently we must shut it off, if only for a moment. Rationality constrains our mind; intuition releases it.”

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• “We have conceived a new idea, Inglish. We will send the ito”

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• “The patina of age is a lesson that time is forever and that you, creature of an hour, would do well to know humility in the face of eternity.”

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• “Perhaps the most noticeable principle of Zen art is its asymmetry; we search in vain for straight lines, even numbers, round circles. Furthermore, nothing ever seems to be centered. Our first impulse is to go into the work and straighten things up—which is precisely the effect the artist intended.”

  Thomas Hoover

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• “There is nothing difficult about the Great Way But, avoid choosing! Only when you neither love nor hate, Does it appear in all clarity. Do not be anti- or pro- anything. The conflict of longing and loathing, This is the disease of the mind. Not knowing the profound meaning of things, We disturb our (original) peace of mind to no purpose.”

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• “. . . the ignorant and the simple minded, not knowing that the world is what is seen of Mind itself, cling to the multitudinousness of external objects, cling to the notions of being and non-being, oneness and otherness, bothness and not-bothness, existence and non-existence, eternity and non-eternity. . .”

  Thomas Hoover

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• “Zen art makes one aware of the work of art itself.”

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• “Extinguish desire and suffering goes with it.”

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• “Cultivation is of no use for the attainment of Tao. The only thing that one can do is to be free of defilement. When one's mind is stained with thoughts of life and death, or deliberate action, that is defilement. The grasping of the Truth is the function of everyday-mindedness. Everyday-mindedness is free from intentional action, free from concepts of right and wrong, taking and giving, the finite or the infinite. . . . All our daily activities—walking, standing, sitting, lying down—all response to situations, our dealings with circumstances as they arise: all this is Tao.”

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• “(Only in a spontaneous utterance is there real, uncalculated evidence of enlightenment.)”

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• “Contemplation of the movement and shifting composition of sea-waves is a useful symbolical approach; for, not only are the waves and the sea identical in substance, but also a given wave does not preserve its individual identity for a single moment as the water composing it is never for an instant entirely the same; thus, by the time it reaches us from a distance, every drop it contains will be other than the drops composing it when we saw it first. On the other hand, sea-water is sea-water and the wave is entirely composed of that. Each wave is void—a mere fluctuating appearance identical in substance with every other wave and with the entire ocean. . .”

  Thomas Hoover

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• “We are unhappy, he explained, because we are slaves to our desires. Extinguish desire and suffering goes with it. If people could be taught that the physical or phenomenal world is illusion, then they would cease their attachment to it, thereby finding release from their self-destructive mental bondage.”

  Thomas Hoover

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