Top 100 Quotes About Zen Buddhism
#2. Zen Buddhism does not preach. Sermons remain words. It waits until people feel stifled and insecure, driven by a secret longing.
Eugen Herrigel
#3. To practice Zen Buddhism is to train oneself to eliminate hatred, anger and selfishness and to develop loving-kindness towards all.
Thich Thien-An
#4. In Zen Buddhism, "The Great Cessation" is a term that points to the abandoning of the effort to define one's self by any outer definition and to give up acts of futility. It is to let the world remain a mystery that cannot be captured by science, language, or any invention of the mind
Mike Scheidt
#5. The light is already there. In Zen Buddhism there's a little speck of dust on the mirror, and that's us.
Frederick Lenz
#6. In Zen Buddhism it is said that "if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him". Which means that if by walking on the spiritual path you encounter the rigid ideas and fixed laws of institutionalised Buddhism , you must free yourself from them too.
Yuval Noah Harari
#7. The most important thing Zen Buddhism teaches us is that we are already originally enlightened. This must never be forgotten.
Clara Taylor
#8. There are things that I value now that I didn't when I first went over there, like Zen Buddhism, which has become part of my life over the last couple years.
Matthew Sweet
#9. Near Tokyo lived a great Samurai warrior, now old, who decided to teach Zen Buddhism to young people. In spite of his age, the legend was that he could defeat any adversary.
Paulo Coelho
#10. In Zen Buddhism an action is considered good when it brings happiness and well-being to oneself and others, evil when it brings suffering and harm to oneself and others.
Thich Thien-An
#11. What sets Tibetan Buddhism apart from other Buddhist traditions - such as the Zen Buddhism of Japan or the Theravada tradition in Sri Lanka - is that while Tibetans aim to become enlightened, they don't want to enter Nirvana.
Scott Carney
#12. Suzuki's works on Zen Buddhism are among the best contributions to the knowledge of living Buddhism ... We cannot be sufficiently grateful to the author, first for the fact of his having brought Zen closer to Western understanding, and secondly for the manner in which he has achieved this task.
D.T. Suzuki
#13. In Zen Buddhism, the greater your doubt, the greater will be your enlightenment. That is why doubt can be a good thing. If you are too sure, if you always have conviction, then you may be caught in your wrong perception for a long time.
Nhat Hanh
#14. Zen Buddhism is a discipline where belief isn't necessary.
David Sylvian
#15. Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.
Alan W. Watts
#16. You will bring yourself the suffering you need to bring yourself so that you may awaken.
T. Scott McLeod
#17. We should live every day like people who have just been rescued from the moon.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#18. We die, he said.
We die, I said. And kn owing this how do we live?
Knowing this, we live.
We live.
Alan Spence
#19. Render unto meditation the things that are meditation's, and unto medication the things that are medication's.
Barry Graham
#20. As a dialectical teacher, I have had many lives where I have taught Zen and Tibetan Buddhism and mysticism. I teach in many different modalites. But the theme that unites them - is love.
Frederick Lenz
#21. Zen professes
itself to be the spirit of Buddhism, but in fact it is the spirit of all
religions and philosophies,
D.T. Suzuki
#22. You listen to people, you listen so deeply that you can hear their past lives,
The crackle of their funeral pyres,
Dick Allen
#23. Old age and death are in the natural course of things. There is nothing a doctor can do about them.
Muso Soseki
#24. Good times come and go. And bad times do the same.
Steve Hagen
#25. Your immediate experience is Tantric Zen. How aware are you of your immediate experience? - Probably not that aware.
Frederick Lenz
#26. The prospect of future lives in remote heavens as a compensation for the inadequacy of our present lives is a bad tradeoff for losing out on the present.
Francis Harold Cook
#27. To forget the self is to remember that we don't exist alone, but in relation to other people, to other creatures, to the planet, and to the universe.
Steve Hagen
#28. When you catch yourself slipping into a pool of negativity, notice how it derives from nothing other than resistance to the current situation.
Donna Quesada
#29. [H]uman experience is determined as much by the nature of the mind and the structure of its senses as by the external objects whose presence the mind reveals.
Alan W. Watts
#30. A Buddha doesn't observe precepts. A Buddha doesn't do good or evil. A Buddha isn't energetic or lazy. A Buddha is someone who does nothing, someone who can't even focus his mind on a Buddha. A Buddha isn't a Buddha. Don't think about Buddhas.
Bodhidharma
#31. The buddha-dharma ... is about directly seeing Truth, prior to forming any ideas about it. It is about responding to each particular situation as it comes ... , not according to some ... program of dos and don'ts.
Steve Hagen
#32. In Zen we strive to bring both the mind and the body into perfect combination, so that there is no intrinsic difference between them.
Frederick Lenz
#33. So, without telling any of my Zen-snob buddies, I liked to pretend everything was the Pure Land, that my life was already perfect as it was.
Jaimal Yogis
#34. What I term Zen, old Zen, the original face of Zen, new Zen, pure Zen, or Tantric Zen is - Zen in its essence.
Frederick Lenz
#35. Can the water in the valleys ever stop and rest?
When the water finally reaches the sea, it becomes great waves.
Francis Harold Cook
#36. Most people put the cart before the horse, which is an interesting way to go through life. They approach everything directly. In Zen we approach everything backwards or inside out.
Frederick Lenz
#37. Tantric Zen is for someone who is really broad-minded. It is Bodhidharma's Zen, your Zen, my Zen. Which doesn't mean I have a problem with Japanese Zen. Most Japanese Zen is minding your p's and q's.
Frederick Lenz
#38. Meditation is to be aware of what is going on: in your body, in your feelings, in your mind, and in the world.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#39. MEDITATION is not to get out of society, to escape from society, but to prepare for a reentry into society
Thich Nhat Hanh
#40. In zazen, leave your front door and your back door open. Let thoughts come and go. Just don't serve them tea.
Shunryu Suzuki
#41. Can you allow yourself to be impaled on the present moment?
T. Scott McLeod
#42. What makes human life
which is inseparable from this moment
so precious is its fleeting nature. And not that it doesn't last but that it never returns again.
Steve Hagen
#43. There's a place where everything comes together and where it's all the same. That state of mind, in which all things are the same, is the state of mind of Tantric Zen.
Frederick Lenz
#44. We do so much, we run so quickly, the situation is difficult, and many people say, "Don't just sit there, do something." But doing more things may make the situation worse. So you should say, "Don't just do something, sit there." Sit there, stop, be yourself first, and begin from there.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#47. Zen and Buddhism have produced martial arts, because of the Buddhist injunction against weapons.
Frederick Lenz
#48. The impossibility of arriving at Truth by giving up your own authority and following the lights of others. Such a path will only lead to an opinion.
Steve Hagen
#49. Tantric Zen, and the people who practice it, of course, make some people feel extremely uncomfortable.
Frederick Lenz
#50. The eternity of "anytime" shines in this moment "now" while the unlimitedness of "anyplace" is manifested in the limits of "here." When the universality of "anyone" dances out in the individual "I," for the first time you have the world of Zen.
Omori Sogen
#51. [T]here is really nothing 'out there' to get because, already, within this moment, everything is whole and complete.
Steve Hagen
#52. What is perfect? From the Zen mind, perfection is not being there.
Frederick Lenz
#53. When I go visit my brother monks in Japan and sit down with other Zen Masters, they look at my crazy clothes and my strange expression, but they feel the power that emanates from my dedication to the practice. So they are comfortable with me, yet they're very uncomfortable.
Frederick Lenz
#54. When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect the mountain exercises vanishes into the air.
D.T. Suzuki
#55. I teach Zen, tantric mysticism, jnana yoga, bhakti yoga, Tibetan mysticism, occultism and psychic development. I also teach poetry and literature, film and many other different things.
Frederick Lenz
#56. Always stay in your own movie.
Ken Kesey
#57. But people of the deepest understanding look within, distracted by nothing. Since a clear mind is the Buddha, they attain the understanding of a Buddha without using the mind.
Bodhidharma
#58. The son needs the father to have access to his source, and the father needs the son to have access to the future and the infinite.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#59. If you were just you, you would be happy. But of course, you don't know who or what you are. So how can you possibly be happy? That is why you have got to study Zen ... or something.
Frederick Lenz
#60. The only way we can be free in each moment is to become what each moment is.
Steve Hagen
#61. [F]ast intercommunication between points is making all points the same point.
Alan W. Watts
#62. In the West, we think of sports and athletics as individual achievement, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat; it all revolves around the ego. This has nothing to do with the Zen of sports and athletics.
Frederick Lenz
#63. Once upon a time,
there was a Zen sign
at every small railway crossing in America
Stop. Look. And listen.
Dick Allen
#64. The samurais were very interested in Zen because they admired the tremendous precision that the Zen Masters had, their lack of fear and pain and their absolute lack of fear of death.
Frederick Lenz
#66. Any good athletic is always in a state of perpetual training, as is the Zen student.
Frederick Lenz
#67. It is the rub that polishes the jewel," Enso Roshi says. "Nobody ever gets to nirvana without going through samsara. Nobody ever gets to heaven, without going through hell. The center of all things, the truth, is surrounded by demons.
T. Scott McLeod
#68. Courage is often associated with aggression, but instead should be seen as a willingness to act from the heart.
Donna Quesada
#69. Naturally, the Zen Master Rama philosophy is to have a high state of awareness and material success.
Frederick Lenz
#70. Those who are already adept at some disciplines of the body will find that the study of Zen and meditation will give you much more control than you now have.
Frederick Lenz
#71. In Tantric Zen you can be humorous and make fun of anything or you can be very serious.
Frederick Lenz
#72. How much does he lack himself who must have many things?
Sen No Rikyu
#73. When we attach to a problem, we make the problem worse. When we attach to a solution, we make the problem worse.
Barry Graham
#74. Good and bad aren't absolutes. They are beliefs, judgements, ideas based on limited knowledge as well as on the inclinations of our minds.
Steve Hagen
#75. If your idea of good opposes something else, you can be sure that [it] is not absolute or certain.
Steve Hagen
#76. Forever is not an idea or a concept, it is reality. All of the things here come from forever. We call forever nirvana in Zen.
Frederick Lenz
#78. A recently deceased American Zen master and navy veteran, John Daido Loori, used to say that those who think Buddhism is just about stillness end up sitting very silently up to their necks in their own shit.
Mark Epstein
#79. There is competition in Zen. Let's not be ridiculous. There is competition in everything in life; being a winner in Zen means, competing and winning in the world of enlightenment.
Frederick Lenz
#80. Question everything, even the question mark, that shepherd's crook floating in the air above that small round rock
If you - stubbornly - still wish to be unhappy,
maybe you can grasp it.
Dick Allen
#81. The Buddha is found in other people - even the ones we do not like very much.
Francis Harold Cook
#82. Tantric Zen is more suited for this age that we live in. It give you rules, but in a gentle way. It's not as demanding.
Frederick Lenz
#83. Where there are humans,
You'll find flies,
And Buddhas.
Kobayashi Issa
#84. It is both dangerous and absurd for our world to be a group of communions mutually excommunicate.
Alan W. Watts
#85. The claim of the Zen followers that they are transmitting the essence of Buddhism is based on their belief that Zen takes hold of the enlivening spirit of the Buddha, stripped of all its historical and doctrinal garments.
D.T. Suzuki
#86. There's no rule in the end, but only the situation and the inclination of your mind
Steve Hagen
#87. When the mind is exhausted of images, it invents its own.
Gary Snyder
#88. In the Zen of sports and athletics, we seek to bring discipline and control into our physical movements, but at the same time to eliminate the self that gets in the way of perfect play.
Frederick Lenz
#89. A well known Los Angeles newspaper referred to a small group of gentlemen who live up on a mountain and practice Zen as 'the Zen cult'. The cult phenomenon is definitely journalistically 'in'.
Frederick Lenz
#90. It is necessary to have a very liberal and simultaneously very conservative mentality to practice Tantric Zen.
Frederick Lenz
#91. We imagine that things come into existence, endure for a while, and then pass out of existence
Steve Hagen
#92. The person who's in the Zen monastery, who's doing a kind of poor job at meditating and a half-ass job cleaning the gardens is not doing very good yoga.
Frederick Lenz
#93. Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment. (From 'Fukan zazengi')
Dogen
#94. To have some deep feeling about Buddhism is not the point; we just do what we should do, like eating supper and going to bed. This is Buddhism.
Shunryu Suzuki
#95. Sometimes it takes a miracle to remind us that the only permanent condition is that of impermanence.
Eric Micha'el Leventhal
#96. Today we can see many different forms of Buddhism, such as Zen and Theravada Buddhism. All these different aspects are practices of Buddha's teachings, and all are equally precious; they are just different presentations.
Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
#97. The true tragedy in most people's lives is that they are far better than they imagine themselves to be and, as a result, end up being much less than they might be.
Earl R. Smith II
#98. In Tantric Zen, career, relationships, the type of insurance you have - all things are part of your evolution, your awareness, your experience of the suchness of existence.
Frederick Lenz
#99. It is in Zen practice that you gain power, balance and wisdom. The battles that you fight are within your own mind. That is where the real victories and defeats are.
Frederick Lenz
#100. A fool sees himself as another, but a wise man sees others as himself.
Dogen
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