Thomas Hoover > Quotes

“Chuang Tzu was invited to the court to serve as a minister, an invitation he declined with a typical story: An ox is selected for a festival and fattened up for several years, living the life of wealth and indulgence—until the day he is led away for sacrifice. At that reckoning what would he give to return to the simple life, where there was poverty but also freedom? In”
― Thomas Hoover, The Zen Experience

“Being natural means to exist spontaneously without having to take any action.”
― Thomas Hoover, The Zen Experience

“Whereas the logical mode of thought can only manipulate the world view of given paradigm, intuition can inspire genuine creativity, since it is not shackled by the nagging analytical mind, which often serves only to intimidate imaginative thought.”
― Thomas Hoover, The Zen Experience

“When we act on our spontaneous judgment, we are almost always better off.”
― Thomas Hoover, The Zen Experience

“I was at the famous Shiva temple of Brihadishwari in Tanjore,”
― Thomas Hoover, The Moghul

“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, The Zen Experience

“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, The Zen Experience

“Zen would have our perception of the world, indeed our very thoughts, be nonverbal.”
― Thomas Hoover, The Zen Experience

“Extinguish desire and suffering goes with it.”
― Thomas Hoover, The Zen Experience

“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, Zen Culture

“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.”
― Thomas Hoover, The Zen Experience

“revised them to suit Zen purposes.”
― Thomas Hoover, Zen Culture

“There is a story that one of the Seven Sages, a man named Liu Ling (ca. 221-330), habitually received guests while completely naked. His response to adverse comment was to declare, "I take the whole universe as my house and my own room as my clothing. Why, then, do you enter here into my trousers."14”
― Thomas Hoover, The Zen Experience

“Words can point the way, but the path must be traveled in silence.”
― Thomas Hoover, The Zen Experience

“Quietistic meditation is easier, naturally, but a person who practices it will turn out to be just as insecure and petty as someone not enlightened at all. What is equally important, "leisure-time" meditation that separates our spiritual life from our activities is merely hiding from reality. You cannot come home from the job and suddenly turn on a meditation experience.”
― Thomas Hoover, The Zen Experience

“. . . 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, The Zen Experience

“Being natural means to exist spontaneously without having to take any action. . . . By taking no action is not meant folding one's arms and closing one's mouth. If we simply let everything act by itself, it will be contented with its nature and destiny. (12)”
― Thomas Hoover, The Zen Experience

“Zen art makes one aware of the work of art itself.”
― Thomas Hoover, Zen Culture

“It is easier to be tranquil about existence when you recognize the pointlessness of solemnity.”
― Thomas Hoover, Zen Culture

“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.”
― Thomas Hoover, The Zen Experience

“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.”
― Thomas Hoover, Zen Culture

“The right pace, neither slow nor fast, cannot get into the hand unless it comes from the heart.”
― Thomas Hoover, The Zen Experience

“All that was worth handing on died with them; the rest, they put into their books.8”
― Thomas Hoover, The Zen Experience

“Only in formal meditation can there be the real beginning of understanding.”
― Thomas Hoover, The Zen Experience

“According to Ch'an (and Zen), understanding comes only by ignoring the intellect and heeding the instincts, the intuition.”
― Thomas Hoover, Zen Culture

“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.15”
― Thomas Hoover, The Zen Experience

“Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.”
― Thomas Hoover, Zen Culture

“He didn't realize it, but with those words he had played directly into Sabri Ramirez's hands. The scenario was now a lock. When Jack Mulhoney turned back to his radio, he only heard static.   7:47 p.m.   Vance watched as the frigate got off a warning tracer, but to no effect. The Hind ignored it, as a stream of 57mm rockets from under the chopper's stubby starboard wing flared down, while the radar-slaved machine gun beneath the nose opened fire.”
― Thomas Hoover, Project Cyclops

“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.”
― Thomas Hoover, The Zen Experience

“These early Japanese had no religious doctrines other than respect for the natural world and the sanctity of family and community. There were no commandments to be followed, no concept of evil. Such moral teachings as existed were that nature contains nothing that can be considered wicked, and therefore man, too, since he is a child of nature, is exempt from this flaw. The only shameful act is uncleanliness, an inconsiderate breach of the compact between man and nature.”
― Thomas Hoover, Zen Culture