User:JEN9841

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A Zen Master lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening, while he was away, a thief sneaked into the hut only to find there was nothing in it to steal. The Zen Master returned and found him. "You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler, "and you should not return empty handed. Please take my clothes as a gift." The thief was bewildered, but he took the clothes and ran away. The Master sat naked, watching the moon. "Poor fellow," he mused, " I wish I could give him this beautiful moon."

Useful links

"God will not have his work made manifest by cowards." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

About Me[edit]

I am a tetrapod who loves philosophy, music, and lots of other things. I live on the planet Earth. I play the trumpet, and I wish I could play the theremin. I adore Mozart, Mahler, Bach, and Beethoven, but I have also danced within the six-sided ring of fire with Ozzy Osbourne. I enjoy racquetball, running, Zen koans, irony, dry humor, science, dreaming, semantic satiation, history, shape-shifting, metabolizing, milk, the Internet, politics, film, and essence. I made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. Did you know I'm utterly insane?

Pages I've created[edit]

Philosophy stuff[edit]

Books[edit]
Philosophy lists[edit]

Legal stuff[edit]

Case law[edit]

Law schools[edit]

Political stuff[edit]

Tall stuff[edit]

Ohio stuff[edit]

Movie stuff[edit]

Misc.[edit]

Songs[edit]

Books[edit]

Lists[edit]

My Silly Little Boxes[edit]

This user is proud to be an American.
This user lives in the U.S. State of Ohio.
This user enjoys philosophy.
This user enjoys classical music.
This user eats cookies.
This user is a cat lover.
This user is interested in
science.
This user types with their feet.
noc This user is nocturnal.
Don't worry, Pluto, I'm not a planet either.
This user remembers VHS. ±
STAR WARSThis user is a true Star Wars fan, and as one, considers the films to be a single work.
A, B, and CThis user prefers the serial comma.
Go slowly insane as you sit and stare...


Quotes[edit]

"All men by nature desire to know." - Aristotle


"I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail." --William Faulkner (December 10, 1950)


"In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” – Albert Camus


"And now I shall go away, sentenced by you to death; they will go away, sentenced by truth to wickedness and injustice." -Socrates


"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light" - Plato


"Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life." - Immanuel Kant


"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd." - Voltaire


"In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. " - Carl Sagan


"Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators" -Richard Dawkins


"If you stare into the Abyss long enough, the Abyss stares back at you." - Friedrich Nietzsche


Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? —Mary Oliver


“If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.” -Gustav Mahler


The story goes that Zeno was flogging a slave for stealing. "I was fated to steal," cried the slave. "And to be flogged," was Zeno's reply.


“When you get blue and you've lost all your dreams, there's nothing like a campfire and a can of beans.” --Tom Waits


“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” – Michelangelo


“Without great solitude no serious work is possible.” --Pablo Picasso


"I cannot write in verse, for I am no poet. I cannot arrange the parts of speech with such art as to produce effects of light and shade, for I am no painter. Even by signs and gestures I cannot express my thoughts and feelings, for I am no dancer. But I can do so by means of sound, for I am a musician." - W.A. Mozart


"Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking." - Goethe


"We're here to bring you back to the one true faith: the Western Branch of American Reform Presby-Lutheranism." -Reverend Timothy Lovejoy


“The field mouse is fast, but the owl sees at night.” --Chip, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby


Eastern wisdom[edit]

"No seed ever sees the flower." -Zen saying


"The obstacle is the path."-Zen proverb


“The temple bell stops, but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.”- Matsuo Bashō


“Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.”


“After enlightenment, the laundry.”


"With the evening breeze the water laps against the heron's legs." - Buson


"Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass." - Dogen


"Knock on the sky and listen to the sound."

Poems[edit]

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost


Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.



Holy Sonnet X
by John Donne


Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou thinkst thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow
And soonest our best men with thee do go
Rest of their bones and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppies or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke. Why swellst thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die!



There's a certain slant of light
by Emily Dickinson


There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
'Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.