Zen Encounters with Loneliness Quotes

“The Tao Te Ching says, “The enemy is a shadow you yourself cast.” The
shadow wanders our unregarded hours where we hold resentments,
where we are lost, when there is nothing and no one to blame, though we
keep on blaming. I often wonder what is the light that hits the ego, casting
out the shadow? It is gratitude. And if the ego is gone, as it is when we are
truly grateful, there is no one to cast a shadow. We can replace blame with
gratitude—in any circumstance. Blame builds up walls around the self and
points only outward. Gratitude opens the heart, dissolves the self, and
points everywhere.”
― Terrance Keenan, Zen Encounters with Loneliness

“There is a word that comes to us from the Middle Low German that
means to be tongue-tied. Not so much that one cannot think what to say
but that the experience is so beyond words and the conditions defined by
words and their reasoned order that the tongue is tied by expressing
silence. It is mumchance. It is the experience one has confronting
something beyond meaning.”
― Terrance Keenan, Zen Encounters with Loneliness