Zen Mind Quotes

#1. What is perfect? From the Zen mind, perfection is not being there.

Frederick Lenz

#2. Until we recognize the SELF that exists apart from who we think we are - we cannot know the Ch'an ( ZEN ) MIND

D.T. Suzuki

#3. If you have the sense of participation in sports or athletics, of being a player, then you are not really into the Zen mind. In Zen mind there is no sense of self in the play.

Frederick Lenz

#4. Throwing away Zen mind is correct Zen mind. Only keep the question, 'What is the best way of helping other people?'

Seungsahn

#5. People say that practicing Zen is difficult, but there is a misunderstanding as to why. It is not difficult because it is hard to sit in the cross- legged position, or to attain enlightenment. It is difficult because it is hard to keep our mind pure and our practice pure in its fundamental sense.

Shunryu Suzuki

#6. Every hour of your life that ticks by, there are numerous points and moments when you can choose to pause - and be aware of your mental and physical state. At any given point, you can freeze the flow that is your life, and be fully conscious for a moment.

Kevin Michel

#7. I've done a fair amount of that stuff ... when we did Lord of the Rings the transformation sequence from Smeagol to Gollum was a 19-hour make-up job. You have to have a kind of zen button that you press and allow the mind to be focused in a certain way.

Andy Serkis

#8. 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

#9. [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

#10. 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

#11. 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

#12. When mind and action are separate, zen is lost. We keep the two in sync by paying attention.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#13. Zen is the study of mind in all of its manifestations. The purpose of Zen is to be happy.

Frederick Lenz

#14. In Zen there is a sense of blending, of stepping out of your body and mind and gaining access to powers and abilities that are far beyond the minds of mortal men.

Frederick Lenz

#15. This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner. Be very very careful about this point. If you start to practice zazen, you will begin to appreciate your beginner's mind. It is the secret of Zen practice.

Shunryu Suzuki

#16. 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

#17. To escape from the world means that one's mind is not concerned with the opinions of the world.

Dogen

#18. My conscious mind must have its roots and origins in the most unfathomable depths of being, yet it feels as if it lived all by itself in this tight little skull.

Alan W. Watts

#19. 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

#20. The ten thousand states of mind that we talk about in Zen are all levels of perception. You can think of each of the ten thousand states of mind as a dimensional plane.

Frederick Lenz

#21. 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

#22. Being under stress is like being stranded in a body of water. If you panic, it will cause you to flail around so that the water rushes into your lungs and creates further distress. Yet, by calmly collecting yourself and using controlled breathing you remain afloat with ease.

Alaric Hutchinson

#23. The mind's best trick is the illusion that it exists.

Marty Rubin

#24. If you want to discover the true meaning of Zen in your everyday life, you have to understand the meaning of keeping your mind on your breathing and your body in the right posture in zazen.

Shunryu Suzuki

#25. 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

#26. Mastering my mind one thought at a time.

Nikki Rowe

#27. When composing a verse let there not be a hair's breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.

Matsuo Basho

#28. You are not your thoughts!! This simple yet powerful statement can greatly change the quality of your life.

Dawn Gluskin

#29. Zen is the most scientific method to inquire into your consciousness. It takes you beyond mind into a space called no-mind. No self, but pure awareness, and you have a taste of eternity and immortality.

Rajneesh

#30. The chaos doesn't end, you kinda' just become the calm.

Nikki Rowe

#31. I may discuss contemporary cinema, how to shop at a mall without losing energy, how to use the power of mind to increase career and academic success, the Zen of sports, reincarnation, karma, sex, the experience of "suchness" or a new book by Stephen King.

Frederick Lenz

#32. The study of Zen is a retraining. It is a series of new ways, not just one way, to learn to use your mind more efficiently.

Frederick Lenz

#33. In advanced Zen a person comes to realize that the existence of things and their ability to perceive them correctly is completely dependent upon their state of mind.

Frederick Lenz

#34. A long walk and grooming with a well-mannered dog is a Zen experience that leaves you refreshed and in a creative frame of mind.

Dean Koontz

#35. We're lost where the mind can't find us
utterly lost

Ikkyu

#36. There's no rule in the end, but only the situation and the inclination of your mind

Steve Hagen

#37. When the mind is exhausted of images, it invents its own.

Gary Snyder

#38. The more you condemn yourself for thinking or feeling a certain way, the more you feel stuck within your own body and mind.. What if you went the other way and embraced it so totally that it was as if there was never any alternative experience to be reached for? What happens when the conflict ends?

Adam Oakley

#39. What writing practice, like Zen practice does is bring you back to the natural state of mind ... The mind is raw, full of energy, alive and hungry. It does not think in the way we were brought up to think-well-mannered, congenial.

Natalie Goldberg

#40. In your big mind, everything has the same value ... In your practice you should accept everything as it is, giving to each thing the same respect given to a Buddha. Here there is Buddhahood

Shunryu Suzuki

#41. To preserve the silence within
amid all the noise. To remain open and quiet, a moist humus in the fertile darkness where the rain falls and the grain ripens
no matter how many tramp across the parade ground in whirling dust under an arid sky.

Dag Hammarskjold

#42. I've been studying the cultures of Asia for many years, and I'm very attracted to the culture of Japan, in particular to the impact Zen has had on the Japanese mind and spirit.

John McLaughlin

#43. People talk about the joy of running--of the endorphins and reaching a Zen-like clarity of mind. This had never happened to me. Mostly, all I thought about when I ran was how much further I had to go before I could stop.

Laura Morrigan

#44. 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

#45. 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

#46. Zazen is seated meditation-the opposite of contemplation-the emptying of the mind of all thoughts in order simply to be. In the midst of all evil, not a thought is aroused in the mind-this is called za. Seeing into one's Self-nature, not being moved at all-this is called Zen.

Huineng

#47. I like Catch-22, Gravity's Rainbow and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, for instance, because the authors of those three surrealistic novels - Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon and Robert Pirsig - invented their own rules, knowing that the old ones wouldn't do the job they had in mind.

William Zinsser

#48. The Zen of doing anything is doing it with a particular concentration of mind, a calmness and simplicity of mind, that brings the experience of enlightenment and, through that experience, happiness.

Chris Prentiss

#49. 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

#50. Zen is not a religion. There is no room for a cult. There is no dependence on a teacher. There is only learning how to use your own mind and making it strong.

Frederick Lenz

#51. If you are around a lot of human beings who are filled with jealousy and anger and rage and desire, it filters into the mind. Zen is writing a new program to run in the mind.

Frederick Lenz

#52. I recommend, for many people, the study of computer science. Our natural resource in America is the mind. The mindset in computer science is very similar to the mindset in Zen.

Frederick Lenz

#53. Anywhere we go, we will have our self with us; we cannot escape ourselves.

Thich Nhat Hanh

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

Frederick Lenz

#55. Zen is a kind of unlearning. It teaches you how to drop that which you have learned, how to become unskillful again, how to become a child again, how to start existing without mind again, how to be here without any mind.

Rajneesh

#56. With the notion that we can open up our world by opening our minds, realize that home is the land that is least explored, and that adventure is a notion not determined by location, but is ultimately a state of mind.

Forrest Curran

#57. There's kind of a Zen aspect to bowling. The pins are either staying up or down before you even throw your arm back. It's kind of a mind-set. You want to be in this perfect mind-set before you released the ball.

Jeff Bridges

#58. We do not want to deny existence. Yet we also do not want to limit existence. Thus, we observe and honor without forming opinion, labeling, or adding a story to the object of our observation.

Alaric Hutchinson

#59. Flow with whatever may happen, and let your mind be free: Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.

Zhuangzi

#60. With silence comes mindfulness, and thus we become better at choosing our words with kind intent before we express them.

Alaric Hutchinson

#61. Whether you are a genius or an idiot, a thief or, like me, a Zen priest who has cultivated the mind for 30 years - the mind anyway is subject to conditions.

Zoketsu Norman Fischer

#62. When mind exists undisturbed in the Way, nothing in the world can offend, and when a thing can no longer offend it ceases to exist in the old way. When no discriminating thoughts arise, the old mind ceases to exist.

Sengcan

#63. The true purpose [of Zen] is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes ... Zen practice is to open up our small mind.

Shunryu Suzuki

#64. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few

Shunryu Suzuki

#65. Dr. Parent has been a great influence on my mental game. ZEN GOLF is the best book at connecting golf and the mind together. It's for everyone, it really helps, and you're really going to enjoy it.

Vijay Singh

#66. Have the right attitude in advanced practice. Feel that you are always a beginner in Zen. They refer to it as "beginners mind". I feel I am a beginner, always; because it's true.

Frederick Lenz

#67. The journey is made up of the most genuine and honest wonders of the mind, but also includes unfathomable sorrow and despair; yet, this is what makes up a journey as well as the human experience in entirety.

Forrest Curran

#68. One thing, all things: move among and intermingle, without distinction. To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection. To live in this faith is the road to non-duality, because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.

Sengcan

#69. To enter the Buddha Way is to stop discriminating between good and evil and to cast aside the mind that says this is good and that is bad.

Dogen

#70. Zen is a very quick path to enlightenment and development of the mind and all its facilities.

Frederick Lenz

#71. This is the monkey mind of which Zen speaks: the mind that worries, doubts, frets about the past, makes lists, all the time chattering like a monkey.

Patricia Monaghan

#72. The nimble of mind long for the challenge of new discoveries. Weary minds cling to what is already known.

K. Lee Lerner

#73. Mindfulness helps you understand that the past is gone, can't be changed and all the lessons are already learned.

Lidiya K.

#74. For me, whenever I'm physical it spins my mind and whenever there's a lot going on I put my gloves on or I wrestle somebody and I feel zen.

Steven R. McQueen

#75. We call it the transmission of the lamp in Zen. That's when we take enlightened states of mind and literally, you can transfer them, just like you can hand somebody flowers.

Frederick Lenz

#76. The practice of Zen is to eat, breathe, cook, carry water, and scrub the toilet - to infuse every act of body, speech, and mind - with mindfulness, to illuminate every leaf and pebble, every heap of garbage, every path that leads to our mind's return home.

Nhat Hanh

#77. A peaceful mind appreciates the present moment as the living embodiment of naked perfection, rather than a means to future attainment.

Eric Micha'el Leventhal

#78. A person who undertakes the study of Zen and learns concentration and meditation is like a gymnast. You become a gymnast of the mind.

Frederick Lenz

#79. Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate.

Huang Po

#80. Golf is a spiritual game. It's like Zen. You have to let your mind take over.

Amy Alcott

#81. In the study of Zen you can learn how to strengthen and clarify your finite mind. Your finite mind is like a muscle; when exercised it becomes stronger.

Frederick Lenz

#82. In Zen we classify ten thousand different states of mind, different ways of seeing life. There is something beyond the ten thousand states of mind that we call nirvana.

Frederick Lenz

#83. These are some of the characteristics of the state of mind which the creation and appreciation of haiku demand: Selflessness, Loneliness, Grateful Acceptance, Wordlessness, Non-intellectuality, Contradictoriness, Humor, Freedom, Non-morality, Simplicity, Materiality, Love, and Courage.

R.H. Blyth

#84. Tantric Zen is a state of mind

Frederick Lenz

#85. Just like there are different roads that lead to different places, so there are different levels of awareness that lead to different places and we shift in and out of them. These are the ten thousand states of mind that we study in Zen.

Frederick Lenz

#86. Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.

Bodhidharma

#87. All success in sports and athletics, from the Zen point of view, comes from the mind. No matter what kind of shape your body is in, there is disharmony in the being.

Frederick Lenz

#88. A simple fishing boat in the midst of the rippling waters is enough to awaken in the mind of the beholder a sense of vastness of the sea and at the same time of peace and contentment - the Zen sense oof the alone.

D.T. Suzuki

#89. [A] view of the world is nothing more than a set of beliefs, a way to freeze the world in our mind. ... [T]his can never match Reality, ... because the world isn't frozen.

Steve Hagen

#90. Through the study of Zen you can learn to move from lower to higher states of mind at will. Higher states of mind offer you a much more accurate picture of reality.

Frederick Lenz

#91. According to Zen philosophy each human being has two minds, a finite mind and an infinite mind.

Frederick Lenz

#92. Meditation is the way the mind is. That's why in Zen they call it the natural state, which means you don't have to go and do anything to meditate.

Frederick Lenz

#93. If you want to be free of the wars of the world, begin by resolving the wars within you. If you want to see the world at peace, create peace within your mind.

Forrest Curran

#94. Tantric Zen is all about the practice of zazen meditation. If you meditate well, you'll be in very powerful states of mind and then it really doesn't matter what you do.

Frederick Lenz

#95. It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.

Seneca.

#96. In Zen the emphasis is on meditation and developing your body, mind and spirit to find inner peace, strength, clarity and enlightenment.

Frederick Lenz

#97. You worry yourself unnecessarily. Put the thought of hitting right out of your mind!

Eugen Herrigel

#98. Peace never hurries. To rush or force is contradictory to the very essence of peace.

Alaric Hutchinson

#99. Being in touch with oneself is the meaning of meditation, to be aware of what is going on in your body, in your feelings, in your mind.

Thich Nhat Hanh

#100. To Mr. Jones, she said, imagine you're looking up at a blue sky, and imagine a tiny airplane skywriting the letter Z. Then let the wind erase the letter. Then imagine the plane writing the letter Y. Let the wind erase it. Then the letter X. Erase it. Then the letter W.
Let the wind erase it.

Chuck Palahniuk