A Quote by Robert M. Pirsig
The only zen thoughts you can find on a mountain summit are those you brought yourself.
Related Quotes
Everest wasn't like any other mountain. Only one of ten climbers who attempt the mountain stands on the summit. And for every three climbers who do scale the mountain, one dies trying. The facts aren't welcoming. But you don't plan a trip to Everest believing those facts will apply to you.
And now that we have returned to the desultory life of the plain, let us endeavor to import a little of that mountain grandeur into it. We will remember within what walls we lie, and understand that this level life too has its summit, and why from the mountain-top the deepest valleys have a tinge of blue; that there is elevation in every hour, as no part of the earth is so low that the heavens may not be seen from, and we have only to stand on the summit of our hour to command an uninterrupted horizon.
Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai 'Ngaje Ngai', the House of God. Close to the western summit there is a dried and frozen carcas of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.
The summit is not the only place on the mountain.
What I term Zen, old Zen, the original face of Zen, new Zen, pure Zen, or Tantric Zen is - Zen in its essence.
The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.
The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.
In the old days, Zen was not really practiced so much in a monastery. The Zen Master usually lived up on a top of the mountain or the hill or in the forest or sometimes in the village.
I'm one of those people who always needs a mountain to climb. When I get up a mountain as far as I think I'm going to get, I try to find another mountain.
Bodhidharma who brought Zen from India to the Orient, taught a very pure Zen - in that it was pure Zen. He wanted to show that the way still existed and wanted to get back to its essence.
Zen is the enemy of analysis, the friend of intuition. The Zen artist understands the ends of his art intuitively, and the last thing he would do is create categories; the avowed purpose of Zen is to eliminate categories! The true Zen-man holds to the old Taoist proverb,
Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.
You don't really conquer a mountain, you conquer yourself. You overcome sickness & everything else - your pains, aches, fears - to reach the summit.
Once you reach the top of the mountain and you want to climb the next one, you have to slowly make your way down that first mountain. Trying to jump from the summit would get you hurt or killed.
Tantric Zen is for someone who is really broad-minded. It is Bodhidharma's Zen, your Zen, my Zen. Which doesn't mean I have a problem with Japanese Zen. Most Japanese Zen is minding your p's and q's.
A well known Los Angeles newspaper referred to a small group of gentlemen who live up on a mountain and practice Zen as 'the Zen cult'. The cult phenomenon is definitely journalistically 'in'.
Whoever climbed the Lord's mountain had to possess clean hands and an innocent heart; otherwise the Summit would kill him. Today the doorway is deserted. Soiled hands and sinful hearts are able to pass by without fear, for the Summit kills no longer.
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