“The Master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in everything he does, leaving others to determine whether he is at work or at play. To him, he is always doing both.”
— Zen quotation
Cool, eh? Zen and all — at least the letter-to-the-editor writer in the recent Wall Street Journal SAID it is a a Zen quote. A quick Google search, on the other hand, attributes it to American author James Michener, who probably had his Zen moments but could hardly be called a master.
Gee, I love a good quote, but I’ve been suspicious of them ever since the Desiderata hoax in the Seventies. (Why do Zen-sounding quotes always wind up being written by some guy from the Midwest?) My other favorite is the “Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate” quote that has been attributed back and forth from Marianne Williamson to Nelson Mandela so many times that I’m beginning to suspect neither one of them wrote it.