Bring Me the Rhinoceros Quotes

“Zhaozhou often quoted this saying by Sengcan: “The great way is not difficult if you just don’t pick and choose.”
― John Tarrant, Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans to Bring You Joy

“You need courage to find out what you really want in life, and what you want might be dangerous. But life is dangerous anyway, and there is a beauty in becoming more and more fully who you are, in paying attention to, as well as being pulled along by, your red thread.”
― John Tarrant, Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life

“It’s true though, that the impulse to give freely to the world seems to be at the bottom of the well of human intentions where the purest and clearest water arises. To be able to offer back what the world has given you, but shaped a little by your touch—that makes a true life.”
― John Tarrant, Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life

“Still, there were questions that would not go away. None of the usual solutions to life that were on offer meant much to me and, like many young people, I didn’t at first expect to live for a long time. When I continued living anyway and needed to make a life, I found myself yearning to make sense of things. I had noticed, as almost everyone does, moments of great and apparently everlasting beauty followed by standard-issue miseries and found the incongruence hard to deal with. I wanted to be loyal to that beauty while not dodging the dark bits.”
― John Tarrant, Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life

“For a long time I felt cut off from the world, a billiard ball in a Cartesian space, and a gulf separated me from the fish, animals, trees, and people—my mind was not content or whole. There were symptoms, such as having more thoughts than I could possibly use at any given moment, and clumsiness with people, but probably the main symptom was of being shut out of the magic in things. I worried at the problem, studying animals and plants and noticing that all the steps I took did not help. Then one day the gap wasn’t there anymore. After the gap disappeared, I could let a situation tell me what it was about, let people reveal themselves to me, without finding a problem. Sometimes wholeness is just given. It has to be given actually, because effort leads to effort, not to wholeness.”
― John Tarrant, Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life

“live your way into the answer.1 —RAINER MARIA RILKE’S ADVICE TO A YOUNG POET”
― John Tarrant, Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life

“We might believe that we are our thoughts and feelings, but our thoughts and feelings are objects in the world, just like tables and mirrors. We might have to negotiate with them at any time.”
― John Tarrant, Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life

“Often what you might think of as yourself is a list of problems and achievements, particularly problems. Without a problem, you wouldn’t need anything. You could lose your citizenship in the society of people who need things. If you have a problem, you need closure, or revenge, or to understand your mother, or to have your partner meet your needs. Yet most of these things are extremely unlikely to occur. And not one of these things would bring happiness if it did occur.”
― John Tarrant, Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life

“When a problem is intractable and you cannot conceive of a solution to it, you will just have to live through it without a neat story about how it is to be solved.”
― John Tarrant, Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life

“If you are busy thinking that you should be kind, you might miss the reality that kindness is already present, in you.”
― John Tarrant, Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life

“Since joy might be hiding anywhere, you would be willing to look with curiosity at sadness or fear, just in case.”
― John Tarrant, Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life