Dogen Zenji Quotes

It is faith that moves mountains, because it gives the illusion that mountains move …. Illusion is perhaps the only reality in life.

Like a mountain that's growing.

All motion is relative. Maybe it's you who've moved away by standing still.

A moving shadow means more to us than a body at rest. We are no longer taken in by a fixed grin. We know that only death has a rictus.

Faith actually moves no mountains, but instead raises them up where there were none before.

In our daily lives, we see ourselves often in very reductive ways. I want to explore motion, change and flux, whether we are looking in the mirror or seeing ourselves in our surroundings. The singular view of self contradicts the act of living.

Mountains aren't eternal: even the most imposing massifs are smoothed away by weathering in a few hundred million years or less. Plate tectonics makes new ones, and without it, our future would be flat.

Thus it cannot be denied that the masses which today form our highest mountains were originally in a liquid state; for a long time they were covered by waters which did not sustain any life.

I realize that nothing's as it seems.

I've walked a lot in the mountains in Iceland. And as you come to a new valley, as you come to a new landscape, you have a certain view. If you stand still, the landscape doesn't necessarily tell you how big it is. It doesn't really tell you what you're looking at. The moment you start to move the mountain starts to move.

Look! Don't be deceived by appearances - men and things are not what they seem. All who are not on the rock are in the sea!

An epoch is but a swing of the pendulum; and each generation thinks the world is progressing because it is always moving.

I often tend to think that things are not what they seem.

Now I may have faith/ to make mountains fall/ But if I lack love/ then I am nothin' at all

Mountains, according to the angle of view, the season, the time of day, the beholder's frame of mind, or any one thing, can effectively change their appearance. Thus, it is essential to recognize that we can never know more than one side, one small aspect of a mountain.

In Zen Buddhism, the greater your doubt, the greater will be your enlightenment. That is why doubt can be a good thing. If you are too sure, if you always have conviction, then you may be caught in your wrong perception for a long time.

If only we can give them faith that mountains can be moved, they will accept the illusion that mountains are moveable, and thus an illusion may become reality.

We may confidently come to the conclusion, that the forces which slowly and by little starts uplift continents, and that those which at successive periods pour forth volcanic matter from open orifices, are identical.

You do not believe, you only believe that you believe.

If I told you that a flower bloomed in a dark room, would you trust it?

We learn geology the morning after the earthquake, on ghastly diagrams of cloven mountains, upheaved plains, and the dry bed of the sea.

Consciousness is only possible through change; change is only possible through movement.

The mountains of today are the molehills of tomorrow.

gravity, n. I imagine you saved my life. And then I wonder if I'm just imagining it.

Why are the bones of great fishes, and oysters and corals and various other shells and sea-snails, found on the high tops of mountains that border the sea, in the same way in which they are found in the depths of the sea?