I believe that just as everyone inherits a particular form so does he inherit the particular characteristics and qualities of his progenitors, and to make this admission is to conserve one's energy.
We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbor with those virtues that are likely to benefit ourselves. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets.
Although profoundly "inconsequential," the Zen experience has consequences in the sense that it may be applied in any direction, to any conceivable human activity, and that wherever it is so applied it lends an unmistakable quality to the work.
From the very beginning our people have markedly combined practical capacity for affairs with power of devotion to an ideal. The lack of either quality would have rendered the other of small value.
I want to be involved in things I can be really proud of. There's a lot of bad films being made and I don't understand how they got the money for it. That said, there's a lot of bad telly, but there's also a lot of very high quality that is something I'd be much more proud of than a mediocre film.
I am perfectly confident that I could never adequately convey to any other human being the precise reasons why I continue to refrain from suicide - the reasons, that is, why I still find existence enough of a compensation to atone for its dominantly burthensome quality.
We can never lose what is really ours. Who can lose his being? Who can lose his very existence? If I am good, it is the existence first, and then that becomes colored with the quality of goodness. If I am evil, it is the existence first, and that becomes colored with the quality of badness. That existence is first, last, and always; it is never lost but ever present.