Quotes by Japanese Authors - Page 14

Why would you want to appear as one thing and be another? If you are a warrior then you are a warrior and if you are not a warrior then you are not a warrior. The Way of the warrior is the Way of the warrior. To be a warrior, look like a warrior and stand like a warrior. Do not be false to yourself.
Miyamoto Musashi
All you do is think. Because all you do is think, you've constructed two separate worlds—one inside your head and one outside. Just the fact that you tolerate this enormous dissonance—why, that's a great intangible failure already.
Sōseki Natsume
Even if you have not awakened, if you realize that your perceptions and activities are all like dreams and you view them with detachment, not giving rise to grasping and rejecting discrimination, then this is virtually tantamount to awakening from the dream.
Muso Kokushi
Hey. I've just thought of something which I shouldn't think about. Hey. Whoa, wait a minute. I feel like I'm thinking of even ore things I shouldn't. After all, I can't want, nor wish for it, because I'll never get it. Even though there's no way that guy's life will belong to me. Why am I this upset? We met more than ten years ago. But even on the day we first kissed, and the day we first slept together, somehow, he has never... told me he likes me, much less that he loves me. I've never said it either. And yet, I've only told him to stay by my side. I thought that was enough. I hate this. Why am I fixated on that man? I don't want to realise that now. That I want him to love me. I want him to love me. I want him to love me so much I could die.
Natsuki Kizu
Why am I fixated on that man? I don't want to realise that now. That I want him to love me. I want him to love me. I want him to love me so much I could die.
Natsuki Kizu
I kissed the girl on the lips, as if to suck her breath inside me. When I did this, the girl wilted, ever so slightly. In my arms, gradually she became lighter, and more transparent. The smell of lilies rose up, filling my breast, overwhelming me. The taste of the kiss was so sweet, I couldn't stop–even thoughI knew she would go on wilting if I continued. The girl was wilting by the instant, and something thick and strong was filling my breast.
Hiromi Kawakami
Radical space technologies never reach the public because unknown groups do not wish humanity to have access to the highest knowledge or the most advanced scientific inventions. Perhaps this suppression is out of fear that the masses may be able to explore our Solar System and the Universe beyond it. Whatever the case, it seems they want us to stay at ignorant levels forever.
Takaaki Musha
The world’s governments have many classified layers and outsiders rarely gain access to their hidden secrets. And certainly no common man can get confirmation of the existence of exotic technologies.
Takaaki Musha
Science and technology are the engines of prosperity. Of course, one is free to ignore science and technology, but only at your peril. The world does not stand still because you are reading a religious text. If you do not master the latest in science and technology, then your competitors will.
Michio Kaku
Does writing exist for the typewriter, or the typewriter for writing? . . . the invention of the computer would one day make [the] argument obsolete . . . technologies exist for humans, and not vice versa.
Minae Mizumura
As she stared at the restless pixels on the screen, her impatience grew. This agitation was familiar, a paradoxical feeling that built up inside her when she was spending too much time online, as though some force was at once goading her and holding her back. How to describe it? A temporal stuttering, an urgent lassitude, a feeling of simultaneous rushing and lagging behind. It was a horrible, stilted, panicky sensation, hard to put into words.
Ruth Ozeki
I was afraid to go into a restaurant because I was intimidated by the waiters furtively hovering behind me waiting for my plate to be emptied. Most of all I dreaded paying a bill-my awkwardness when I handed over the money after buying something did not arise from my stinginess, but from excessive tension, excessive embarrassment, excessive uneasiness and apprehension.
Osamu Dazai
When did my youth slip away from me? I suddenly thought. It was over, wasn't it? Seemed just like yesterday I was still only half grown up. Huey Lewis and the News had a couple of hit songs then. Not so many years ago. And now here I was, inside a closed circuit, spinning my wheels. Knowing I wasn't getting anywhere but spinning just the same. I had to. Had to keep that up or I wouldn't be able to survive.
Haruki Murakami
It was two years ago that I first met Yuki. I remember that painfully thin figure covered in dirt: malnourished, exhausted and carrying a sleeping child in his arms like it's the most precious thing in the world.
Kyuugou
The people who build high, strong fences are the ones who survive the best. You deny that reality only at the risk of being driven into the wilderness yourself.
Haruki Murakami
The fear that permeated every fiber of my being was relentless, it was cruel, and it was my best hope for getting through this.
Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Even I recognize that I'm not being a proper role model right now. But I need you to understand. As your mother, it's my duty to protect you from the evil intentions of whoever did this...and I'll become a demon if I have to. That's all there is to it.
Ryukishi07
A tiger of a rather and a wolf of a brother. Sandwiched between the two, I wonder what my tomorrow holds.
Kazuo Koike
Perhaps this was the wisdom with which a child in her position survived: by minimizing her wounds—staying as small as possible, as nearly transparent as possible.
Haruki Murakami
I study the chessboard and concede defeat."You can gain yourself in five moves" says the Colonel. "Worth fighting to the end. In five moves your opponent can err. No war is won or lost until the final battle is over.
Haruki Murakami
Now she realized that she was not peering at a so-dark-blue-it-looked-black ocean, but rather she was looking straight through miles of incredibly clear water at something enormous and black in its nethermost depths. Maybe it was the bottom--so deep that not even light could touch it.And yet, down in those impossible depths, she thought she could see tiny lights sparkling. She stared uncertainly at the tiny glimmerings. They seemed almost like scattered grains of sand lit from within; in some places they clustered like colonies, faint and twinkling.Like stars...
Fuyumi Ono
When the stars fall into darkness, I will quietly shine for you.
Mika Yamamori
I wish Italy would stop being a crybaby. I wish he would kick his bad habit of wanting to eat pasta everywhere. I wish he would stop getting a stomachache every time he ate geleto. I wish he would learn to throw a grenade properly. I wish his older brother would stop trying to punch me. I wish-"*babble babble babble*"Germany . . . That's impossible . . .
Hidekaz Himaruya
Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment. (From 'Fukan zazengi')
Dōgen
There are some among the so-called elite who are overbearing and arrogant. I want to foster leaders, not elitists.
Daisaku Ikeda
By nature, it's impossible to describe enlightenment! How do you plan on sharing your enlightenment? Hahaha, that's impossible. Wake up! That'll be the end of the world if you ever succeed!
Osamu Tezuka
On the other hand, we can all call to mind the case of seeing the same thing many times over and over. Everyone has had the experience of having their impression of a particular object change depending upon their feelings or conditions at a given moment. This is because the object is seen under the influence of the mental state of that moment. Of course, at the time when we are looking at something, we are generally not aware of the way our feelings are being protected into the situation.Seen in this way, our so-called cognition, or the action of discerning the meaning of things as they are perceived by us, is never in any case a perception of the external world exactly as it is, but rather a world that can only be apprehended via its interface with our present mental state. In other words, it is nothing other than our own mind that constructs things and determines their content. This is the meaning of "consciousness-only," or "nothing but the transformations of consciousness." And, if we turn this around, we ourselves are nothing other than things that dwell in a world defined by the limits of that which is knowable by the functions of our own mind.
Tagawa Shun'ei
We live our lives based on the assumption that we directly perceive, and are accurately interpreting, objects with a fair amount of accuracy. Since we naturally assume that we are apprehending objects of cognition as best as possible, it does not occur to us that we are purposely twisting the object before our eyes to fit our own convenience.
Tagawa Shun'ei
A fool sees himself as another, but a wise man sees others as himself.
Dōgen
Even in zazen you will lose yourself. When you become sleepy, or when your mind starts to wander about, you lose yourself. When your legs become painful—“Why are my legs so painful?”—you lose yourself. ”-“You just sit in the midst of the problem; when you are a part of the problem, or when the problem is a part of you, there is no problem, because you are the problem itself. The problem is you yourself. If this is so, there is no problem.”-“When you start to wander about in some delusion which is something apart from you yourself, then your surroundings are not real anymore, and your mind is not real anymore. If you yourself are deluded, then your surroundings are also a misty, foggy delusion. Once you are in the midst of delusion, there is no end to delusion. You will be involved in deluded ideas one after another. Most people live in delusion, involved in their problem, trying to solve their problem. But just to live is actually to live in problems. And to solve the problem is to be a part of it, to be one with it.
Shunryu Suzuki
When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect the mountain exercises vanishes into the air.
D.T. Suzuki
When you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely, a trace of yourself will be left in what you do.
Shunryu Suzuki
Somewhere Dōgen wrote about the number of moments in the snap of a finger. I don’t remember the exact figure, only that it was large and seemed quite arbitrary and absurd, but I imagine that when I am in the cockpit of my plane, aiming the nose at the hull of an American battleship, every single one will be clear and pure and discernible. At the moment of my death, I look forward at last to being fully aware and alive.
Ruth Ozeki
Intruding upon a dimension rightfully ours, modern medicine robs us of the dignity of what people in the past regarded as most precious: that final moment of death.
Shinmon Aoki
When you die, you want to die a beautiful death. But what makes for a beautiful death is not always clear. To die without suffering, to die without causing trouble to others, to die leaving behind a beautiful corpse, to die looking good -- it's not clear what is meant by a beautiful death. Does a beautiful death refer to the way you die or the condition of your corpse after death? This distinction is not clear. And when you start to stretch the image of death to the method of how to dispose of your corpse as befitting your image of death, everything grows completely out of hand.
Shinmon Aoki
A maggot is just another life form.
Shinmon Aoki
The eternity of "anytime" shines in this moment "now" while the unlimitedness of "anyplace" is manifested in the limits of "here." When the universality of "anyone" dances out in the individual "I," for the first time you have the world of Zen.
Omori Sogen
Returning to whereIt used to see blossoms,My mind, changed,Will stay on at Yoshino...Home now, and see anew.
Saigyō
Beyond this life andThis world I'll have it tilMy heart's content:The bright moon that passed overThe horizon before I had my fill.
Saigyō
Last year, Yoshino,I walked away bending branchesTo point me to blossoms--Which now are everywhere and I canGo where I've never been before.
Saigyō
Knowing life's purpose would invest everything one did with meaning.
Kentetsu Takamori
Health, wealth, reputation, and status are all mere ingredients of happiness. The key to true well-being is being able to manage them capably.
Kentetsu Takamori
If you want to take care of tomorrow, take better care of today. We always live now. All we have to do is entrust ourselves to the life we now live.
Dainin Katagiri
Salute to the Smiling Faces of the 21st Century.
Daisaku Ikeda
Now seen...now gone,The butterfly flits in and outThrough fence-hung flowers;But a life lived so close to themI envy...though it's here and gone.
Saigyō
Today's satori:Such a change of mind wouldNot exist withoutMy lifelong habit of havingMy mind immersed in blossoms.
Saigyō
Buddhism holds that everything is in constant flux. Thus the question is whether we are to accept change passively and be swept away by it or whether we are to take the lead and create positive changes on our own initiative. While conservatism and self-protection might be likened to winter, night, and death, the spirit of pioneering and attempting to realize ideals evokes images of spring, morning, and birth.
Daisaku Ikeda
I'd like to dividemyself in order to see,among these mountains,each and every flowerof every cherry tree.
Saigyō
Rise to the challenges that life presents you. You can't develop genuine character and ability by sidestepping adversity and struggle.
Daisaku Ikeda
The determination to win is the better part of winning.
Daisaku Ikeda
People can only live fully by helping others to live. When you give life to friends you truly live. Cultures can only realize their further richness by honoring other traditions. And only by respecting natural life can humanity continue to exist.
Daisaku Ikeda
Strength is Happiness. Strength is itself victory. In weakness and cowardice there is no happiness. When you wage a struggle, you might win or you might lose. But regardless of the short-term outcome, the very fact of your continuing to struggle is proof of your victory as a human being.
Daisaku Ikeda
Limitations gone:Since my mind fixed on the moon,Clarity and serenityMake something for whichThere's no end in sight.
Saigyō
Tightly held by rocksThrough winter, the ice todayBegins to come undone:A way-seeker also is the water,Melting, murmuring from the moss.
Saigyō
Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.
Shunryu Suzuki
There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. There will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.
Tsunetomo Yamamoto
O snailClimb Mount FujiBut slowly, slowly!
Kobayashi Issa
Where there are humans, You'll find flies,And Buddhas.
Kobayashi Issa
A person, who no matter how desperate the situation, gives others hope, is a true leader.
Daisaku Ikeda
Whereever you are, you are one with the clouds and one with the sun and the stars you see. You are one with everything. That is more true than I can say, and more true than you can hear.
Shunryu Suzuki