-- Everything written symbols can say has already passed by. They are like tracks left by animals. That is why the masters of meditation refuse to accept that writings are final. The aim is to reach true being by means of those tracks, those letters, those signs -- but reality itself is not a sign, and it leaves no tracks. It doesn't come to us by way of letters or words. We can go toward it, by following those words and letters back to what they came from. But so long as we are preoccupied with symbols, theories and opinions, we will fail to reach the principle.

-- But when we give up symbols and opinions, aren't we left in the utter nothingness of being?

--Yes.

Kimura Kyuho, Kenjutsu Fushigi Hen [On the Mysteries of Swordsmanship], 1768

A true revelation, it seems to me, will only emerge from stubborn concentration on a solitary problem. I am no in league with inventors or adventurers, nor with travellers to exotic destinations. The surest -- also the quickest -- way to awake the sense of wonder in ourselves is to looki intently, undeterred, at a single object. Suddenly, miraculously, it will reveal itself as something we have never seen before.

Cesare Pavese, Dialoghi con Leuco, 1947