Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life

We don’t expect the answers to our questions to come out of nothing. However that might be the only place a solution can come from. You start by not knowing—not knowing how or what or why or who—until that seems to be quite an acceptable place to spend time in. Then the strange thing is that if you reach out your hand, what you need might be there.

It seemed that if I took this journey I would be utterly changed. And before setting out, I couldn’t predict what that change would be. That was interesting to me. It encouraged me to set off with only the vaguest directions.

For thirty years I searched for a master swordsman. How many times did the leaves fall and the branches break into bud? But from the moment I saw the peach blossoms, I’ve had no doubts.4

Through the koans I stopped trying to improve myself. The koan had made me more interested in my actual life, and less interested in an ideal or spiritual life.

When I was off balance, koans pushed me further off balance and into unknown territory. I liked that. I was always struggling to have things make sense, and koans allowed me, or required me, to work with life more the way an artist would, loving especially the material that didn’t

The woman’s discoveries were about her own nearness to things. If you have empathy with someone, you join them; for a moment, you have the same heart. If you have the same heart as someone, you know their name. If you assume that there really is a light in your own kitchen, then you probably notice that sometimes you can see it. Sometimes nothing i

When you can’t see the light in your own kitchen, could it be because you are making things small, measuring your life in coffee spoons?

that must be achieved. On the other hand, freedom is always interesting. When I was without what I should do and might do and could do, I just did what was obvious and was given to me. I experienced that as one of the shapes of love.

It’s in the nature of imprisonment to believe that we are our thoughts. When we don’t, freedom seems to have already arrived.