Top 63 Zen Master Quotes: Famous Quotes & Sayings About Zen Master

#1. I thought with all this freedom and self-discovery and expression of our love stuff that we could finally stop with the whole Zen master wisdom and practical advice crap.

Richelle Mead

#2. What is Tantric Zen? Well, I don't think I can give you a straight answer, since I don't happen to be a very straight Zen master.

Frederick Lenz

#3. The Zen Master was constantly attempting to break up concepts that people had about what it was like to be a spiritual teacher. We have a traditional image. Each Zen master was a complete character.

Frederick Lenz

#4. 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

#5. The renowned seventh-century Zen master Seng-tsan taught that true freedom is being without anxiety about imperfection.

Tara Brach

#6. And the question of Wester religion," Flattery said, "is: What lies beyond death? But the question of the Zen master is: What lies beyond waking?

Frank Herbert

#7. Others have falsely claimed to be the inspiration for Tom Booker in The Horse Whisperer. The one who truly inspired me was Buck Brannaman. His skill, understanding and his gentle, loving heart have parted the clouds for countless troubled creatures. Buck is the Zen master of the horse world.

Nicholas Evans

#8. If the Zen master sees that it will cause a person to progress, he will ask that person to do a task. The task is charged with power if it's performed properly. It's a koan between yourself and the Zen Master.

Frederick Lenz

#9. 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

#10. What are you, Zen Master Fang?

Charlaine Harris

#11. In Old Zen, the Zen Master would do literally anything to break down the concept of what the study was. He would present conflicting codes all the time, just to shake this fixation people had on how to attain liberation.

Frederick Lenz

#12. Little absent from everything in the way of a Zen Master actually who realizes that everything is indifferent anyway,

Jack Kerouac

#13. In the mind of the beginner, all things are possible, But in the mind of the expert, only a few. Zen Master Suzuki-Roshi

Barbara L. Jordan

#14. I've been in these tabloids for 14 years now, and at some point you just become a Zen master of it all

Brad Pitt

#15. 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

#16. I stole this from Zen Master Suzuki Roshi: If it's not paradoxical it's not true!

C.B. Murphy

#17. Zen Master Doc The says that when sitting in meditation, one should sit upright, giving birth to this thought, Sitting here is like sitting on the Bodhi spot.

Thich Nhat Hanh

#18. A Zen master once said, "To go eastward one mile is to go westward one mile." This is vital freedom. We should acquire this kind of perfect freedom.

Shunryu Suzuki

#19. There are two primary ways of studying Zen. Either an individual will enter into a Zen monastery and study with a Zen master there, or they will study with a Zen master who lives in the contemporary world.

Frederick Lenz

#20. There is really only one Zen Master ... and that's yourself.

Frederick Lenz

#21. If you're very, very conservative and you like that sort of practice, go find a very conservative Zen master and just do traditional Japanese practice, which is not that traditional actually.

Frederick Lenz

#22. Deluded beings think that if they get in a battle with a Zen Master or with a Don Juan, that it's going enhance their life if they win. You can never take power from someone else any more than you can take sunlight.

Frederick Lenz

#23. You're not listening to the Zen master, what he is saying outwardly, but even more importantly ... what he is saying inwardly.

Frederick Lenz

#24. I'm a Zen Master. I'm an occult teacher. I teach people how to become that, how to be perfect.

Frederick Lenz

#25. Like the moon on the water, in a way. When you confront a Zen master, what you're really seeing are not his limitations but yours.

Pico Iyer

#26. I was talking to a Zen master the other day and he said, "You shall be my disciple."I looked at him and said, "Who was Buddha's teacher?" He looked at me in a very odd way for a moment and then he burst into laughter and handed me a piece of clover.

Alan Watts

#27. The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there. -Yasutani Roshi, Zen master (1885-1973)

Yasutani Roshi

#28. A zen master's life is one continuous mistake.

Dogen

#29. It's a relationship like to a crusty Zen master, or something like that. And it is really like another entity because you cannot predict the answers.

Terence McKenna

#30. One Zen master said, The whole universe is my true personality. This is a very wonderful saying ... If you want to see what you truly are, open the window, and everything you see is in fact the expression of your inner reality. Can you embrace all of it?

Adyashanti

#31. Happiness only comes when you let go of who you think you are. If you think you're wealthy and powerful and noble and truthful or horrible and demonic, whatever it may be, it's all a waste of time. Take it from the Zen Master. He knows.

Frederick Lenz

#32. A Zen master is someone whose life is one with enlightenment and self-discovery. They can never be separated from that. They've been essentially mastered by Zen.

Frederick Lenz

#33. In the advanced practice, the relationship between the Zen master and the student becomes very terse. The Zen master will expect things of the student because the student is in graduate school.

Frederick Lenz

#34. The Zen master walks in his garden, alone. There is no traffic there. There is no shopping there. There are only the flowers.

Frederick Lenz

#35. Naturally, the Zen Master Rama philosophy is to have a high state of awareness and material success.

Frederick Lenz

#36. We must recognize our own behavioral errors. To be blunt, you are not likely to become a cognitive Zen master anytime soon. But a little enlightenment could keep you from making some common investing errors.

Barry Ritholtz

#37. Roy had communicated, days earlier, to the Zen master that I was a drunk - unreliable - either faint-hearted or vicious - therefore during the cerimony, don't ask Bukowski for the rings because Bukowski might not be there. or he might loose the rings, or vomit, or loose Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

#38. He was, in his way, as close to a Zen master as I've ever had, and all of us who fell under his influence began with his style and eventually ended up with our own.

Nora Ephron

#39. Inspiration comes from everything from the entire world, and it's hard to pinpoint one thing. I can trace one inspiration to the writing of 13th-century Zen master Dogen Zenji, who writes beautifully about time.

Ruth Ozeki

#40. A Zen master used to say, It is clear and so it is hard to see. A dunce once searched for a fire with a lighted lantern. Had he known what fire was, he could have cooked his rice much sooner.

Rajneesh

#41. At Patagonia, making a profit is not the goal because the Zen master would say profits happen 'when you do everything else right'.

Yvon Chouinard

#42. The Zen master can see precisely what it will take to cause your awareness to become free. But the Zen master can't do it for you.

Frederick Lenz

#43. I slipped it into your papers to see if you would notice. The Zen master Ikkyu was once asked to write a distillation of the highest wisdom. He wrote only one word: Attention.

Jenny Offill

#44. You may wonder which came first: the skill or the hard work. But that's a moot point. The Zen master cleans his own studio. So should you.

Twyla Tharp

#45. 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

#46. In the old days, Zen was not really practiced so much in a monastery. The Zen Master usually lived up on a top of the mountain or the hill or in the forest or sometimes in the village.

Frederick Lenz

#47. In Zen we have no gurus.

Frederick Lenz

#48. I have lived with several Zen masters
all of them cats.

Eckhart Tolle

#49. One master defines Zen as the art of feeling the polar star in the southern sky. Truth can be reached only through the comprehension of opposites.

Okakura Kakuzo

#50. Illusions can and do create PHYSICAL Dis-Ease within our bodies. So it's most important to master our thoughts, to become cognizant of what we are spending our precious mental energy on each moment of every day.

Alaric Hutchinson

#51. It takes courage to become authentic. So many talk about the light but not enough speak the truth about the struggles it takes to get there and the tools to overcome it all.

Nikki Rowe

#52. And not being guided into action by foolish thought is what is known as "wisdom" (prajna).

Zen Master So Sahn

#53. The Master's warning that we should not practice anything except self-detaching immersion.

Eugen Herrigel

#54. Every day Zuigan used to call out to himself, "Master!" and then he answered himself, "Yes, Sir!" And he added, "Awake, Awake!" and then answered, "Yes, Sir! Yes, Sir!"
"From now onwards, do not be deceived by others!" "No, Sir! I will not, Sir!"

Wumen Huikai

#55. Behind the cool mask of bravado, past the one-way mirror of his mind, underneath the rock-solid layers of self-control, in the Zen garden that was Master Sewer's soul, a high-pitched anxiety fart rustled through the still leaves. If farts could talk, this one would have said, Damn coppers!

Sorin Suciu

#56. Don't seek the truth; just drop your opinions.

Anthony

#57. Wild woman are an unexplainable spark of life. They ooze freedom and seek awareness, they belong to nobody but themselves yet give a piece of who they are to everyone they meet.
If you have met one, hold on to her, she'll allow you into her chaos but she'll also show you her magic.

Nikki Rowe