Zen Time Quotes

#1. To Zen, time and eternity are one.

D.T. Suzuki

#2. 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

#3. Did I ever mention I used to be a delivery driver too? I was. I can read a map. What's more, using a brilliant mixture of zen navigation, Aristotelian logic, and pure rage I can get you your package and/or delicious sandwich relatively close to on-time.

Patrick Rothfuss

#4. Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.

Alan W. Watts

#5. We have to be in the present time, because only the present is real, only in the present can we be alive. We do not practice for the sake of the future, to be reborn in a paradise, but to be peace, to be compassion, to be joy right now.

Thich Nhat Hanh

#6. Zen is a double-edged sword, killing words and thoughts, yet at the same time, giving them life. Although beyond human intellect and philosophy, Zen is their root and source.

Masao Abe

#7. We're all in this together and we don't have much time.

Richard Aitken

#8. The first time she saw the boy across the classroom, Ah Lee knew she was in love because she tasted durian on her tongue.

Zen Cho

#9. Have you ever thought; whilst looking all this time for the magic in the world, it's been inside you all along? No matter how far you travel, how wide you spread your wings and learn to fly if you have no idea what treasures hide within you you'll be searching your entire life.

Nikki Rowe

#10. 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

#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. 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

#13. 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

#14. Every place is a place to practice. Every time is a time to practice. Zen is concerned with the thought we have this moment rather than with rituals or rules of behavior

Bill Porter

#15. A time of uncertainty, of not knowing exactly where we're headed, or what kind of choice to make is a Zen moment.

Brenda Shoshanna

#16. 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

#17. As Zie Zen's ashes flew on the wind, so did the time of those who had been born in freedom, caged in Silence, only to see it fall. Now . . . now it was the time of those who had been born in Silence, fought for freedom.

Nalini Singh

#18. The greater the time of grief or stress the greater reason we have to be in alignment with peace.

Alaric Hutchinson

#19. 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

#20. Zen opens a man's eyes to the greatest mystery as it is daily and hourly performed; it enlarges the heart to embrace eternity of time and infinity of space in its every palpitation; it makes us live in the world as if walking in the garden of Eden

D.T. Suzuki

#21. So I was first exposed to this guy Tim McCarthy, and he's talking about Zen, but deeper than that he was a genuine person. I thought maybe he's someone I can trust and follow this thing he's talking about all the time.

Brad Warner

#22. Life is a journey. Time is a river. The door is ajar

Jim Butcher

#23. 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

#24. There is no other space, no other time. This moment is all. In this moment the whole existence converges, in this moment all is available.

Osho

#25. If only people stopped acting like they've been asked to donate a lung every time somebody asks for something the world would be a better place

Alina Radoi

#26. Tantric Zen is for the individual who is in love with both the finite and the infinite, who gets a kick out of this weird transitory world and at the same time, wants to step beyond it.

Frederick Lenz

#27. The object of Zen is not to kill all feelings and become anesthetized to pain and fear. The object of Zen is to free us to scream loudly and fully when it is time to scream.

Francis Harold Cook

#28. If you have time to be mindful, you have time to meditate.

Ajahn Chah

#29. When life is empty, with respect to the past, and aimless, with respect to the future, the vacuum is filled by the present - normally reduced to a hairline, a split second in which there is no time for anything to happen.

Alan W. Watts

#30. Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?

D.T. Suzuki

#31. We have two eyes to see two sides of things, but there must be a third eye which will see everything at the same time and yet not see anything. That is to understand Zen.

D.T. Suzuki

#32. Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed, do not squander your life.

Dogen

#33. But the goal of Zen Housekeeping is not to have a home that is perfect. It is to embrace the process of keeping the house - one perfect moment at a time.

Lauren Cassel Brownell

#34. Every time you run
you create the quality of your own experience

Fred Rohe

#35. The more I can accept the fact that change is moving all the time, and that the change I am experiencing right now is just the change of this moment and that this moment will change into the next and the next, the less need I will have to clutch in fear.

Sharon Weil

#36. I love road trips. You get into this Zen rhythm; throw sense of time out the window.

Miriam Toews

#37. I did Urban Zen for myself, to make clothes for me and my friends, a similar philosophy to when I started Donna Karan. Except this time I hope it will stay that way so that I will be able to support young designers and mentor them.

Donna Karan

#38. One has to adopt a sort of Zen calm, in which you know you wrote the best book that you could at the time.

Daniel Handler

#39. 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

#40. Zen is the only religion in the world that teaches sudden enlightenment. It says that enlightenment takes no time, it can happen in a single, split second.

Rajneesh

#41. After spending all that time in bed, I realized I was treating the act of eating as though it's the art of Zen, taking in just enough, a little at a time, slowly. Exactly the way I never did with food. Like dancing without passion, eating like that will never awaken your palate.

Kyung-ran Jo

#42. Umasi kept walking, out of sight and into the glittering night. Meahwhile, Zen lay alone, defeated on the cold ground, knowing that he had truly been left behind. Then the memories returned, and for the first time in his life, he cried.

Isamu Fukui

#43. 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

#44. That's a waste of time. If you really understand Zen ... you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because ... the sound of the rain needs no translation.

Alan Watts

#45. 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

#46. No such thing as time travel, he'd rumbled patiently, once. Only live with what you've done, and try in the future to do what you're happy to live with.

Richard K. Morgan

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

Nikki Rowe

#48. Once upon a time,
there was a Zen sign
at every small railway crossing in America

Stop. Look. And listen.

Dick Allen

#49. X and Y
the Co-ordinates of
Zen Navigation

X = the limited time you have on the road, in a life
Y = the eternity you have in every hour, every day
Z = Each step you take is a once-in-a-lifetime infinite thing

Vivian Swift

#50. Those who sit perfectly physically usually take more time to obtain the true way of Zen.

Shunryu Suzuki

#51. Old Zen is the way of nothingness, the way of having a good time.

Frederick Lenz

#52. 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

#53. Crowdsourcing is the ultimate disruptor of distribution because in a most Zen-like fashion, the content is controlled by everyone and no one at the same time.

Jay Samit

#54. Those who can sit perfectly physically usually take more time to obtain the true way of Zen, the actual feeling of Zen, the marrow of Zen.

Shunryu Suzuki

#55. Sometimes it takes a miracle to remind us that the only permanent condition is that of impermanence.

Eric Micha'el Leventhal

#56. Goodbye," said Siew Tsin.
"See you next time," said Lady Meng, more accurately.
"Will you remember me when I come again?"
"Of course," said Lady Meng. "I miss you every time.

Zen Cho

#57. The Zen philosophy posits that 'human beings suffer' and 'the cause of suffering is desire.' The way to put an end to suffering is to stop wanting everything, all the time.

Karl Albrecht

#58. In zen, it is a cardinal sin to waste time. To waste time is to squander the here and now, which, if you think about it, is all that we have.

Philip Toshio Sudo