A fly is as untamable as a hyena.
Interpretation
Both a fly and a hyena symbolize creatures that cannot be easily controlled or domesticated.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that certain aspects of life, much like nature itself, are inherently wild and unmanageable. Just as a fly flits about freely and a hyena exhibits its unpredictable and instinctual behaviors, there are elements of existence that resist human attempts at control, reflecting the importance of recognizing and accepting the untamed aspects of the world.
In practice
In a motivational speech about resilience and accepting life's unpredictability.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Meditation is such a more substantial reality than what we normally take to be reality.
Pride and curiosity are the two scourges of our souls. The latter prompts us to poke our noses into everything, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved and undecided.
When I was little, my dad told me about Anandpur Sahib and the court of Guru Gobind Singh. That we came from a tradition of poets, warriors and artists who created when it was illegal to create... we're groomed to be reckless in the defense of what we feel is right.
I realised that if I wished to write about the dark and not allow for hope, people would recognise it as false - because hope is the nub of what we are.
For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
The basic idea of Zen is to come in touch with the inner workings of our being, and to do this in the most direct way possible, without resorting to anything external or superadded. Therefore, anything that has the semblance of an external authority is rejected by Zen. Absolute faith is placed in a man's own inner being. For whatever authority there is in Zen, all comes from within.
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