What is the Sound of One Hand Clapping? ...
by Zen Koan

What is the Sound of One Hand Clapping?
- Traditional Zen Koan

Related topics: Zen

Overflowing Cup of Tea:
The Zen Master poured his visitor's teacup full, and then kept pouring.
The visitor watched until he could no longer restrain himself.
"It is overfull. No more will go in!"
"Like this cup," the Zen Master said,
"you are full of your own opinions and assumptions.
How can you learn truth until you first empty your cup?"
- Traditional Zen Koan

The Sweetest Strawberry:
A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger.
He fled, the tiger after him.
Coming to a precipice,
he caught hold of the root of a wild vine
and swung himself over the edge.
The tiger sniffed at him from above.
Trembling, the man looked down to where,
far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him.
Only the vine sustained him.
Two mice, one white and one black,
little by little started to gnaw away the vine.
The man then saw a luscious strawberry near him.
Grasping the vine with one hand,
he plucked the strawberry with the other.
How sweet it tasted.
- Zen Koan

Time to Die:
A Zen teacher had a rare and priceless teacup.
One day, his precocious student accidentally broke the cup.
Hearing the footsteps of his teacher,
the student held the pieces of the cup behind his back.
When the master appeared, he asked: "Why do people have to die?"
"This is natural," explained the teacher.
"Everything has to die and has just so long to live."
The student showed the shattered cup, saying,
"It was time for your cup to die."
- Traditional Zen Koan

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The True Path is the path on which
there is no coming and no going.
- Traditional Zen Koan

The Moon Cannot Be Stolen:
A thief entered the little hut of a Zen Master,
but discovered there was nothing to steal.
The Zen Master discovered the thief.
"You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler,
"and you should not return empty-handed.
Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered,
but he took the clothes and slunk away.
The Zen Master sat naked, watching the moon.
"Poor fellow," he mused,
"I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon."
- Traditional Zen Koan

A system of morality which is based
on relative emotional values
is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception
which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.
- Socrates

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty,
the contemplation of mystery,
or the search of truth or perfection
is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession
of such days is fatal to human life.
- Lewis Mumford

Visualize your end result as having already been accomplished.
Let the image of your success play on the giant screen
in full color with surround sound -
so real you can smell and taste it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The primal rhythmic power
and resonant sound of waves on the shore
are like the earth's heartbeat,
and become our connection with the body of nature.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Music is what feelings sound like.
- Anonymous

The sound of 'gentle stillness' after all the thunder
and wind have passed will be the ultimate Word from God.
- Jim Elliot

True friendship is like sound health;
the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
- Charles Caleb Colton

Overwhelm is not a pleasant condition.
The to-do list overflows,
the deadlines appear imminent and immovable.
There are too many demands upon too little of your time.
Does this sound familiar?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

AUM, the most primordial human sound -
and the sound most connected to Spirit,
is pronounced in these three parts:
A (as in mama) - a throat sound
that vibrates in the abdomen - signifies waking.
U (as in who) - a tongue sound
that vibrates in the chest - signifies dreaming.
M (as in mama) - a lip sound
that vibrates in the head - signifies sleeping.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Purity of personal life is the one indispensable condition
for building up a sound education.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Creationists make it sound as though a "theory'
is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
- Isaac Asimov

To the Master's honor all must turn,
each in its track, without a sound,
forever tracing Newton's ground.
- Albert Einstein

Apathy, indifference, not caring...
It may sound insensitive for me to say, "I don't care,"
but ask first to what I am indifferent.
I choose to be caring, compassionate
and kind toward all people,
and I also choose to be indifferent to gossip,
petty complaints, and idle chatter.
About those, I just don't care.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens?
A terrible thing: no one to blame.
- Erica Jong

This day I will marry my friend,
the one I laugh with, live for, dream with, love.
- Anonymous

No one was ever named "Hero" for following the crowd.
Heroes set their own course.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Majority rule only works if you're also
considering individual rights,
because you can't have five wolves and one sheep
voting on what to have for dinner.
- Larry Flynt

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences.
No one can eliminate prejudices -
just recognize them.
- Edward R. Murrow

To know yet to think that one does not know is best;
Not to know yet to think that one knows
will lead to difficulty.
- Lao Tzu

When written in Chinese, the word "crisis"
is composed of two characters.
One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.
- John F. Kennedy

Love one another but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea
between the shores of your souls.
- Khalil Gibran

If you wait for opportunities to occur,
you will be one of the crowd.
- Edward de Bono

Don't let one cloud obliterate the whole sky.
- Anais Nin

The greatest mistake you can make in life
is to be continually fearing you will make one.
- Elbert Hubbard

One does not discover new lands without consenting
to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
- Andre Gide

One can never consent to creep when one feels the impulse to soar.
- Helen Keller

Fear defeats more people than
any other one thing in the world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Try a new perspective on diversity.
Across the country and around the world,
we are all one.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl

One can not reflect in streaming water.
Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.
- Lao Tzu

If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
- Mother Teresa

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal
with the intent of throwing it at someone else;
you are the one who gets burned.
- The Buddha

Friendship is born at that moment
when one person says to another,
"What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
- C. S. Lewis

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned,
so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.
- Joseph Campbell

Individually, we are one drop.
Together, we are an ocean.
- Ryunosuke Satoro

In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans.
- Khalil Gibran

I am one with the Earth,
with the Water, with the Fire,
with the Air that I breathe,
with all Living Things,
and we are all one with Spirit.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Drop the sword - for there is but one flesh to wound,
and it is the one flesh of all humankind.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The essence of all religions is one.
Only their approaches are different.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

"Just living is not enough," said the butterfly,
"one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower."
- Hans Christian Andersen

One important key to success is self-confidence.
An important key to self-confidence is preparation.
- Arthur Ashe

Non-violence and truth are inseparable and presuppose one another.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Each one of us has our own perspective
on everything we see in life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret:
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs.
Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.
- John F. Kennedy

This isn't a rehearsal or a practice life.
This is your real life - your one and only real life.
There are no retakes - no second chances.
Begin now - live full out.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don't take.
- Wayne Gretzky

Society is a masked ball,
where every one hides his real character,
and reveals it by hiding.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Most people give up just when
they're about to achieve success.
They quit on the one yard line.
They give up at the last minute of the game,
one foot from a winning touch down.
- Ross Perot

If you don't take full responsibility
for your own happiness,
who do you suppose will?
Your happiness is a one person job -
it begins and ends with you.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.
Mere tolerance has given place to a sentiment of brotherhood
between sincere men of all denominations.
- Helen Keller

We should not moor a ship with one anchor,
or our life with one hope.
- Epictetus

This time, like all times, is a very good one,
if we but know what to do with it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool.
Writers, alas, have to be fools in public,
while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.
- Erica Jong

Sing like no one's listening,
love like you've never been hurt,
dance like nobody's watching,
and live like its heaven on earth.
- Mark Twain

Never be fooled into believing that
there is one speck out of order.
- Byron Katie

There is only one time that is important - NOW!
It is the most important time because
it is the only time that we have any power.
- Leo Tolstoy

I had three chairs in my house;
one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.
- Henry David Thoreau

The mystery of the beginning
of all things is insoluble by us;
and I for one, must be content to remain an agnostic.
- Charles Darwin

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man.
Everything that exists has brought
with it its own peculiar lesson.
- Orison Swett Marden

I have a dream that my four little children will one day
live in a nation where they will
not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Without deep reflection,
one knows from daily life
that one exists for other people.
- Albert Einstein

A leader is not one who says, "Follow me."
A leader is one who says, "I'll go first."
- Neale Donald Walsch

Love is the total absence of fear.
Love asks no questions.
Its natural state is one of extension and expansion,
not comparison and measurement.
- Gerald Jampolsky

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
The secret of getting started is
breaking your complex overwhelming tasks
into small manageable tasks,
and starting on the first one.
- Mark Twain

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie