Traditional Zen Spirit Quotes

More important than any stage which you will attain is your sincerity, your right effort. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

The problem with all students, he said, is that they inevitably stop somewhere. They hear an idea and they hold on to it until it becomes dead; they want to flatter themselves that they know the truth. But true Zen never stops, never congeals into such truths. That is why everyone must constantly be pushed to the abyss, starting over and feeling their utter worthlessness as a student. Without suffering and doubts, the mind will come to rest on clichés and stay there, until the spirit dies as well. Not even enlightenment is enough. You must continually start over and challenge yourself. ~ Robert Greene

Yoga has had a profound effect on my songs and performances. I don't meditate in the traditional style of sitting and doing nothing. I prefer the zen of paying attention, such as the meditation of yoga flow, or walking meditations. I also consider singing, surfing and gardening to very meditative. ~ Jason Mraz

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

In this entre-nous spirit, then, old confidant before we join the others, the grounded everywhere, including, I'm sure, the middle-aged hot-rodders who insist on zooming us to the moon, the Dharma Bums, the makers of cigarette filters for thinking men, the Beat and the Sloppy and the Petulant, the chosen cultists, all the lofty experts who know so well what we should or shouldn't do with our poor little sex organs, all the bearded, proud, unlettered young men and unskilled guitarists and Zen-killers and incorporated aesthetic Teddy boys who look down their thoroughly unenlightened noses at this splendid planet where (please don't shut me up) Kilroy, Christ, and Shakespeare all stopped – before we join these others, I privately say to you, old friend (unto you, really, I'm afraid), please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of very early-blooming parentheses: (((()))). ~ J.D. Salinger

Wabi means spare, impoverished; simple and functional. It connotes a transcendence of fad and fashion. The spirit of wabi imbues all the Zen arts, from calligraphy to karate, from the tea ceremony to Zen archery. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

It is as if I have entered what the Tibetans call the Bardo-literally, between-two-existences- a dreamlike hallucination that precedes reincarnation, not necessarily in human form ... In case I should need them, instructions for passage through the Bardo are contained in the Tibetan book of the dead- a guide for the living since it teaches that a man's last thoughts will determine the quality of his reincarnation. ~ Peter Matthiessen

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

Find and foster your Passions in life! People who are passionate about what they do are in alignment with Spirit and become magnetic to those around them. This also applies to those already in long-term relationships. How do you keep the love and intimacy alive? Keep your personal Passions alive and the rest will fall into place. We can't share passions with others unless we first have it within ourselves. ~ Alaric Hutchinson

All other creatures look down toward the earth, but man was given a face so that might turn his eyes toward the stars and his gaze upon the sky. ~ Ovid

Left alone, I am overtaken by the northern void-no wind, no cloud, no track, no bird, only the crystal crescents between peaks, the ringing monuments of rock that, freed from the talons of ice and snow, thrust an implacable being into the blue. In the early light, the rock shadows on the snow are sharp; in the tension between light and dark is the power of the universe. This stillness to which all returns, this is reality, and soul and sanity have no more meaning than a gust of snow; such transience and insignificance are exalting, terrifying, all at once ... Snow mountains, more than sea or sky, serve as a mirror to one's own true being, utterly still, utterly clear, a void, an Emptiness without life or sound that carries in Itself all life, all sound. ~ Peter Matthiessen

It's very possible to live life without disliking anyone. It's all vibration. We can get to the point where 'dislike' does not even register as an option in the default settings of our minds.

Some may wonder, 'What does it matter if I like or dislike people?'

In my perception, it matters greatly since dislike influences our entire energetic body. It becomes part of our vibrational aura, what we're emitting and receiving in return from the world. How we respond to the world is how the world will treat us. ~ Alaric Hutchinson

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

What's wrong with technology is that it's not connected in any real way with matters of the spirit and of the heart. And so it does blind, ugly things quite by accident and gets hated for that. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

[I]t becomes clearer and clearer that we do not live in a divided world. The harsh divisions of spirit and nature, mind and body, subject and object, controller and controlled, are seen more and more to be awkward conventions of language. These are misleading and clumsy terms for describing a world in which all events seem to be mutually interdependent[.] ~ Alan W. Watts

The object of our lives is to look at, listen to, touch, taste things. Without them - these sticks, stones, feathers, shells - there is no Deity. ~ R.H. Blyth

Sports and athletics can be a path in Zen, in concordance with daily practice of zazen meditation. You need to move with your spirit, not just with your body. ~ Frederick Lenz

Being the people we are, and feeling the way that we do, getting excited about going somewhere new can be terrifying. Of course it is, I get it! But if you don't travel, you'll regret it. Your soul will forever be empty. ~ S.R. Crawford

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

And what impels him to repeat this process at every single lesson, and, with the same remorseless insistence, to make his pupils copy it without the least alteration? He sticks to this traditional custom because he knows from experience that the preparations for working put him simultaneously in the right frame of mind for creating. The meditative repose in which he performs them gives him that vital loosening and equability of all his powers, that collectedness and presence of mind, without which no right work can be done. ~ Eugen Herrigel

The wind plays its own music. ~ Bert McCoy

Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure and uninterpreted experience, in which body, mind, and nature are the same. This retreat from wonder, the backing away like lobsters into safe crannies, the desperate instinct that our life passes unlived, is reflected in proliferation without joy, corrosive money rot, the gross befouling of the earth and air and water from which we came. ~ Peter Matthiessen

[T]he important point is that a world of inter-dependent relationships, where things are intelligible only in terms of of each other, is a seamless unity. In such a world it is impossible to consider man apart from nature, as an exiled spirit which controls this world by having its roots in another. Man is himself a loop in the endless knot, and as he pulls in one direction he finds that he is pulled from another and cannot find the origin of the impulse. ~ Alan W. Watts

When a garden is used as a place to pause for thought, that is when a Zen garden comes to life. When you contemplate a garden like this it will form as lasting impression on your heart. ~ Muso Soseki

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

If you try to examine your life analytically, asking yourself who you are, finally you will realize that there is something you cannot reach. You don't know what it is, but you feel the presence of something you want to connect with. This is sometimes called the absolute. Buddha and Dogen Zenji say true self. Christians say God. ~ Dainin Katagiri

The marks life leaves on everything it touches transform perfection into wholeness. Older, wiser cultures choose to claim this wholeness in the things that they create. In Japan, Zen gardeners purposefully leave a fat dandelion in the midst of the exquisite, ritually precise patterns of the meditation garden. In Iran, even the most skilled of rug weavers includes an intentional error, the "Persian Flaw," in the magnificence of a Tabriz or Qashqai carpet…and Native Americans wove a broken bead, the "spirit bead," into every beaded masterpiece. Nothing that has a soul is perfect. When life weaves a spirit bead into your very fabric, you may stumble upon a wholeness greater than you had dreamed possible before. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

A Warrior-Sage, you see, is someone who believes in magic and makes magic work for him. He may not call it magic, but the terminology doesn't matter. He may call it positive thinking, or belief, or PMA, or power, or visualization, or self-confidence, or faith, or self-control, or zeal, or enthusiasm, or any of a thousand names, but it's magic all the same.

He may call it the God force, or universal consciousness, or Spirit, or his inner self, or peace, or gentle effort, or universal law, or Zen, or divine love, or even dish water! But as long as he makes it a part of his life and understands how to use it, then it's magic. ~ Karl Wiggins

We grow up to believe that we are supposed to somehow "become" who we are meant to be through the trial-by-fire that is life here on planet Earth.

Reality is...there's no "becoming".

It's actually all an "un-becoming", only to reunite with who you were born to be in the first place before society told you otherwise. ~ Jennifer Sodini

Companies are communities. There's a spirit of working together. Communities are not a place where a few people allow themselves to be singled out as solely responsible for success. ~ Henry Mintzberg

If everyone on Wall Street abided by the rule's spirit, the rule would have established a new fairness in the U.S. stock market. ~ Michael Lewis

If you wish to get pure air into your room, or if you go for a walk in the fresh air, think of the pure and of the unclean heart. Many of us like to have pure air in the room (and this is an excellent habit), or are fond of walking in the fresh air, but they do not even think of the necessity of the purity of the spirit or heart (of, so to say, spiritual air, the breath of life); and, living in the fresh air, they allow themselves to indulge in impure thoughts, impure movements of the heart, and even impurity of language, and most impure carnal actions. ~ John Of Kronstadt

We must live our lives in such a way that our children, and their children after them, will form a natural and lasting commitment to the vigorous life. Only in this way can we be assured that the spirit and strength of America will be constantly replenished.. ~ John F. Kennedy

As women, we can embody all aspects of the Triple Goddess simultaneously (Mother, Maiden, Crone) at every stage of our lives. The elements of feminine mystique, giftedness, and strength are available to us through the spirit as much as the body. ~ Elizabeth S. Eiler

Being scared to fail inspires creativity; heartbreak inspires creativity; being hurt by others inspires creativity; being lost inspires creativity. Your masterpiece isn't something that you will have made in the colorful, it is understood in the darkness. Use the anxiety within and let it serve you. ~ Forrest Curran