Be moderate in eating and drinking. Mindful of the passing of time, engage yourself in zazen as though saving your head from fire.
DogenRead
If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of seeking truth in one's immediate surroundings rather than looking elsewhere.
Dogen's quote reflects the idea that the search for truth begins at home, in our own lives and experiences. It suggests that before seeking answers in far-off places or abstract concepts, we should first look deeply into our current situation, relationships, and environment. This encourages self-examination and mindfulness, urging us to recognize that clarity and understanding can often be found within ourselves and our immediate context.
Themes
TruthSelf-ExaminationMindfulnessPhilosophyAwareness
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a mindfulness workshop to emphasize the importance of self-awareness.
More from Dogen
All quotes βIn the assemblies of the enlightened ones there have been many cases of mastering the Way bringing forth the heart of plants and trees; this is what awakening the mind for enlightenment is like. The fifth patriarch of Zen was once a pine-planting wayfarer; Rinzai worked on planting cedars and pines on Mount Obaku. . . . Working with plants, trees, fences and walls, if they practice sincerely they will attain enlightenment.
DogenRead
To start from the self and try to understand all things is delusion. To let the self be awakened by all things is enlightenment.
DogenRead
A fool sees himself as another, but a wise man sees others as himself.
DogenRead
Do not travel to other dusty lands, forsaking your own sitting place; if you cannot find the truth where you are now, you will never find it.
DogenRead
Do no harmful actions, do not become attached to the cycle of death and rebirth, show kindness, respect the old and have compassion for the young, do not have a heart that rejects or a heart that covets and have no worry or sadness in your heart. This is what is called enlightenment. Do not seek it elsewhere.
DogenRead
Similar quotes
Character - Some day, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long-continued process.
Phillips BrooksRead
Making money ain't nothing exciting to me. You might be able to buy a little better booze than the wino on the corner. But you get sick just like the next cat and when you die you're just as graveyard dead as he is.
Louis ArmstrongRead
India believes that the world is a family, and the best means of resolution is shared discourse. A family is shaped by love and is not transactional; a family is nurtured by consideration, not greed; a family believes in harmony not jealousy.
Sushma SwarajRead
It was Christianity, with its heartfelt resentment against life, that first made something unclean of sexuality: it threw filth on the origin, on the essential fact of our life.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
If gold rusts, what then can iron do?
Geoffrey ChaucerRead
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Edgar Allan PoeRead