Zen Buddhist Quotes

#1. The three elements of creativity are thus: loving, knowing, and doing - or heart, mind, and hands - or, as Zen Buddhist teaching has it; great faith, great question, and great courage.

Eric Maisel

#2. I'm a lapsed Zen Buddhist. I've read hundreds of books on Zen, I meditated daily for about fifteen years, and once spent a month studying with Vietnamese Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh.

Will McIntosh

#3. There's something Zen-like about the way I work - it's like raking gravel in a Zen Buddhist garden.

Chuck Close

#4. I never thought much about God, certainly never wondered whether God was thinking about me, until I fell in love with a Zen Buddhist priest.

Stacey D'Erasmo

#5. To an experienced Zen Buddhist, asking if one believes in Zen or one believes in the Buddha, sounds a little ludicrous, like asking if one believes in air or water. Similarly Quality is not something you believe in, Quality is something you experience.

Robert M. Pirsig

#6. To be a good Zen Buddhist it is not enough to follow the teaching of its founder; we have to experience the Buddha's experience.

D.T. Suzuki

#7. But for the first time, I had a religious identity. I had come home. And so I called myself a Zen Buddhist at the age of 18.

M. Scott Peck

#8. According to Zen Buddhist cosmology there are ten thousand different states of mind to view and understand life through.

Frederick Lenz

#9. To say one is revolutionary is a little like saying one is a Zen Buddhist - if you say you are, you probably aren't.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

#10. And finally, be assured that Zen asks nothing even as it promises nothing. One can be a Protestant Zen Buddhist, a Catholic Zen Buddhist or a Jewish Zen Buddhist. Zen is a quiet thing. It listens.

Howard Fast

#11. I am a Zen Buddhist - but that is not to be thought of as a religion in

Howard Fast

#12. From my own personal encounters and studies with both Tantric and Zen Buddhist monks, I have found them to be humorous, warm, charming, and compassionate.

Frederick Lenz

#13. You grow, learn, and the more I can sit in silence and be comfortable with myself, the more I can make noise, as ironic and Zen Buddhist and satanic as it sounds!

Nikki Sixx

#14. However, it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles either.

Robert M. Pirsig

#15. Not one single atom opposes us.

Yi Wu Hongzhi

#16. Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days' worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.

Ryokan

#17. Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.

Shunryu Suzuki

#18. 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

#19. Like pebbles in a bag, the monks polish each other.

Unknown

#20. Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the most beloved Buddhist teachers in the West, a rare combination of mystic, poet, scholar, and activist. His luminous presence and the simple, compassionate clarity of his writings have touched countless lives.

Joanna Macy

#21. At times, Zen does get into some Buddhist Cosmology. Nishijima Roshi, my main teacher would talk about that and almost every time immediately say that it was only one way of looking at it. Whenever addressing realms of Heaven or Hell, he'd also address that it was just a psychological state.

Brad Warner

#22. Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance.

Taisen Deshimaru

#23. She explained to me that young people need lots of exercise and that we should exhaust ourselves on a daily basis or else we would have troublesome thoughts and dreams, which would result in troublesome actions.

Ruth Ozeki

#24. There are some Buddhist philosophers (a branch referred to as Zen) who say that sometimes a bad thing happens to prevent a worse thing happening,

Kate Atkinson

#25. In general, I call her every night, and we talk for an hour, which is forty-five minutes of me, and fifteen minutes of her stirring her tea, which she steeps with the kind of Zen patience that would make Buddhists sit up in envy and then breathe through their envy and then move past their envy.

Aimee Bender

#26. I came to California in 1970 and so many people were asking if I was a Buddhist or knew Zen theory, asking if I was enlightened already or not. So I said, "Yes, I am enlightened," and then I studied quickly to catch up.

Hiroshi Sugimoto

#27. Zen and Buddhism have produced martial arts, because of the Buddhist injunction against weapons.

Frederick Lenz

#28. Studying with a teacher doesn't simply mean going to an occasional seminar or Zen retreat. It means fully applying yourself to what the teacher says, most of which is not verbal.

Frederick Lenz

#29. Sing before the spirits and dance with the earth deities
And you will be able to compose your own tune.
Then you and I, united, will clap hands joyously,
Singing 'tum-tiddly-um tum-tiddly-um-tum.

Hongzhi Zhengjue

#30. If you do not get it from yourself, where will you go for it?

Dogen