Philip Kapleau Quotes

#1. Every individual who eats flesh food, whether an animal is killed expressely for him or not, is supporting the trade of slaughtering and contributing to the violent deaths of harmless animals.

Philip Kapleau

#2. To suppress the grief, the pain, is to condemn oneself to a living death. Living fully means feeling fully; it means becoming completely one with what you are experiencing and not holding it at arm's length.

Philip Kapleau

#3. The uniqueness of zazen lies in this: that the mind is freed from bondage to all thought forms, visions, objects, and imaginings, however sacred or elevating, and brought to a state of absolute emptiness, from which alone it may one day perceive its own true nature, or the nature of the universe.

Philip Kapleau

#4. Die while alive and be thoroughly dead. Then do what you will, and all will be well

Philip Kapleau

#5. If you fall into poverty, live that way without grumbling - then your poverty will not burden you. Likewise, if you are rich, live with your riches. All this is the functioning of Buddha-nature. In short, Buddha-nature has the quality of infinite adaptability.

Philip Kapleau

#6. A Zen master, when asked where he would go after he died, replied, 'To Hell, for that's where help is needed most.'

Philip Kapleau

#7. Zen Master Dogen has pointed out that anxiety, when accepted, is the driving force to enlightenment in that it lays bare the human dilemma at the same time that it ignites our desire to break out of it.

Philip Kapleau

#8. To put the flesh of an animal into one's belly makes one an accessory after the fact of its slaughter, simply because if cows, pigs, sheep, fowl, and fish, to mention the most common, were not eaten they would not be killed.

Philip Kapleau

#9. The truth is that everything is One, and this of course is not a numerical one.

Philip Kapleau

#10. Many have come to realization simply by listening to the tinkling of a bell or some other sound

Philip Kapleau

#11. You yourself are time- your body, your mind, the objects around you. Plunge into the river of time and swim, instead of standing on the banks and noting the course of the currents.

Philip Kapleau

#12. Although we all possess the seeds of great love and compassion, without the light of the enlightened one's wisdom and the waters of their compassion these seeds would never spout.

Philip Kapleau