If Zen has any preference it is for glass that is plain, has no color, and is "just glass."
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes simplicity and authenticity over embellishment and complexity.
Thomas Merton's quote about Zen promotes the idea of appreciating things as they are, without unnecessary adornments or alterations. In this view, true beauty lies in simplicity and transparency, where one can see things plainly, much like 'just glass' reflects clarity and honesty in life and thought.
In practice
In a discussion about minimalism, this quote can highlight the value of living with less distraction.
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
As a footballer I can't imagine life without the use of one of my legs... Sadly this is exactly what happens to thousands of children every year when they accidentally step on a landmine.
I ask you only to stop imagining that you were born, have parents, are a body, will die and so on. Just try, make a beginning-it is not as hard as you think.
Events are the ephemera of history; they pass across its stage like fireflies, hardly glimpsed before they settle back into darkness and as often as not into oblivion. Every event, however brief, has to be sure a contribution to make, lights up some dark corner or even some wide vista of history. Nor is it only political history which benefits most, for every historical landscape - political, economic, social, even geographical - is illumined by the intermittent flare of the event.
All of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life, everything that is on this planet.
The tragic reality of today is reflected in the true plight of our spiritual existence. We are spineless and cannot stand straight.
He is poor indeed that can promise nothing.
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