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Keep your hands open, and all the sands of the desert can pass through them. Close them, and all you can feel is a bit of grit.

— Taisen Deshimaru Zen to Go (1989)

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More quotes by Taisen Deshimaru

If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.

The Book of Positive Quotations (2007)

Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance.

Zen and the Art of Systems Analysis : Meditations on Computer Systems Development (2002)

To receive everything, one must open one's hands and give.

You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair.

Just Before Dark : Collected Nonfiction (1999)

You must not take out your sword because if you try to kill someone, you must die for it yourself. What you must do instead is kill yourself, kill your own mind.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Taisen Deshimaru (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.