51 Quotes by Kenneth S. Leong

Truth is like life in that we cannot freeze it without killing it.

Impermanence is the way of reality. The world changes. We ourselves change. Change is the only truth. Therefore, to hold on to a fixed idea, concept, doctrine, or opinion is like committing spiritual suicide.

Jesus illustrated the principle of wu-wei beautifully in his Nature Sermon. The wild birds neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet they are fed; the lilies of the field neither toil nor spin, yet they are clothed. Wu-wei is not about being lazy and doing nothing. Rather, it is about following the way of nature and not wasting energy. It is about the beauty of "letting it be"!

While the mainstream Western mind visualizes the good and the evil as two opposite forces, each attempting to annihilate the other, the Taoists envision them as interdependent and complementary. The yin-yang is the primordial symbol for creative tension, without which life and growth are not possible, This understanding that the opposites are complementary is essential to Zen's gentle attitude toward life.

The Zen experience is what happens when you lose yourself in the moment. It feels as if the whole world stops, and you have a supreme sense of harmony and peace. But in fact, what actually stops is your ego-process. When the ego-process stops, so stop your expectations, desires, worries, and anxiety. Then you find yourself living in the present, overtaken by joy and filled with peace.

While "religious" people treat fuzziness as a liability, Zen people treat it as an asset. For this fuzziness of nature, combined with the creativity innate in the human mind, translates into opportunities for our liberation. If the world is indeterminate, then we can use our creativity to interpret it in a way that fosters inner peace and enables spiritual growth.

Reality is neither good nor bad; it is a matter of how we choose to perceive it. For someone who has mastered the art of seeing, the world is always perfect. External reality does not have to change in order to make us happy. The secret lies in changing our perception of it.

Intellectually, we all know that we cannot avoid death. But for most people, there is usually a wide discrepancy between between intellectual reality and psychological reality. Psychologically, we tend to deny death. [...] Recognizing the reality of death psychologically and not just intellectually is an important part of spiritual awakening.

When you can do nothing, what can you do?[...] This is the most amazing, yet most obvious and logical answer: that in the certainty of death, one should get as much out of life as possible. Paradoxically it is the absence of choice in this matter that allows us to have more inner freedom.