If

you’re going to try,

go all the way. Otherwise, don’t

even start. This could mean losing girlfriends,

wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean

not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a

park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could

mean mockery — isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the

others are a test of your endurance, of how much

you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it,

despite rejection and the worst odds.

It’s the only good fight

there is.

Charles Bukowski

Reconsider

your definitions.

We are prone to judge success

by the index of our salaries or the size

of our automobiles rather than by

the quality of our service

and relationship to

mankind.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Life

is the best thing

we have in this existence.

And if we should desire to believe

in something, it should be a beacon within.

This beacon being the sun, sea, and sky, our

children, our work, our companions,

 and, most simply put,

the embodiment

of love.

Patti Smith

gandhigandhi

Lots of arms,

just like Kannon the Goddess;

sacrificed for me, garnished with citron,

I revere it so! The taste of the sea, just divine!

Sorry, Buddha, this is another precept I just cannot keep.

Exhausted with gay pleasures, I embrace my wife.

The narrow path of asceticism is not for me;

my mind runs in the opposite direction.

It is easy to be glib about Zen—

I’ll just keep my mouth shut

and rely on love play

all the day

long.

Ikkyu