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Wherever we go we recreate our shells (hells), like an insect carrying its shell on its body. We feel our shell keeps us safe, but it crushes us and others, and keeps out light and sun.

— Taisen Deshimaru Zen Miracles : Finding Peace in an Insane World (2002)

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Religion

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)

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.

Zen to Go (1989)

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

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The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Thomas Babington Macaulay History of England (1849)

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.