Appalachian Zen Quotes

“By miracle I seem to have survived into this life of contentments, stripping away, giving up, letting go, while gaining immeasurably at every step. I’ve found a life spare in its delineations, yet rich in amplitude.”
― Steve Kanji Ruhl, Appalachian Zen: Journeys in Search of True Home, from the American Heartland to the Buddha Dharma

“A heron swoops the water. A princely, primitive bird, each of its enormous slate-blue wings unfolds effortlessly as a chaise longue. The heron foot-drags the stream. Then it sails aloft and, turning, reveals the silhouette of a pteranodon. I like to divine the lasting essence of this place. I like to feel intimations of something akin to those tutelary spirits—near at hand, beyond spectrum of the visible—to whom Celts built menhirs and dolmens; spirits the pagan Romans called genii loci. Thracian shepherds would have known Duck Run inhabited by potamids, nymphs of rivers and streams. Shinto worshippers in Japan paid homage to divine spirits of leaves, to sacred life coursing through roots and bodies of trees, the kami spirits of wind and water. I like to feel what they felt. I like to hear what they heard: the land improvising always—in zephyr, in freshet—its oracular speech, its earth-jazz, its wild glossolalia.”
― Steve Kanji Ruhl, Appalachian Zen: Journeys in Search of True Home, from the American Heartland to the Buddha Dharma

“Zen Buddhists extol a life of alert composure, of transparent presence in the here-and-now. This life they call “the true home.” It exists for each of us if we will only awaken to it.”
― Steve Kanji Ruhl, Appalachian Zen: Journeys in Search of True Home, from the American Heartland to the Buddha Dharma

“As an American practicing within an Asian religion, both here and in the States, I try to stay vigilant concerning issues related to cultural appropriation—especially the purloining of spiritual traditions from foreign nations…Such issues have validity. So do issues relating to spiritual dilettantism, the shallow, selfish dabbling in religious beliefs and practices of other people.”
― Steve Kanji Ruhl, Appalachian Zen: Journeys in Search of True Home, from the American Heartland to the Buddha Dharma

“A twelfth-century teacher of Ch’an—the Chinese precursor of Zen—named Yuan-Wu said: “It is like coming across a light in thick darkness; it is like receiving treasure in poverty…. You gain an illuminating insight into the very nature of things…. Here is shown bare the most beautiful landscape of your birthplace.”
― Steve Kanji Ruhl, Appalachian Zen: Journeys in Search of True Home, from the American Heartland to the Buddha Dharma