Zen Buddhism Quotes

When you break something, is your first impulse to throw it away? Or do you repair it but feel a sadness because it is no longer "perfect"? Whatever the case, you might want to consider the way the Japanese treated the items used in their tea ceremony. Even though they were made from the simplest materials... these teacups and bowls were revered for their plain lines and spiritual qualities. There were treated with the utmost care, integrity and respect.

For this reason, a cup from the tea ceremony was almost never broken. When an accident did occur and a cup was broken, there were certain instances in which the cup was repaired with gold.

Rather than trying to restore it in a what they would cover the gace that it ahad been broken, the cracks were celebrated in a bold and spirited way. The thin paths of shining gold completely encircled the ceramic cup, announcing to the world that the cup was broken and repaired and vulnerable to change.

And in this way, its value was even further enhanced. ~ Gary Thorp

Western science has made nature intelligible in terms of its symmetries and regularities, analyzing its most wayward forms into components of a regular and measurable shape. As a result we tend to see nature and to deal with it as an "order" from which the element of spontaneity has been "screened out." But this order is maya, and the "true suchness" of things has nothing in common with the purely conceptual aridities of perfect squares, circles, or triangles - except by spontaneous accident. Yet this is why the Western mind is dismayed when ordered conceptions of of the universe break down. and when the basic behavior of the physical world is found to be a "principle of uncertainty. ~ Alan W. Watts

This place of stuck - "I have to" and "I can't" - feels familiar from my spiritual work. We're told to simply "let go" - but when we try to do this, we often seem to get more deeply tangled in the willful web of resistance. In spite of injunctions to the contrary, "letting go" doesn't appear to be something we have conscious control over. Why can't we just let go into the loving arms of the universe? What is this holding back that seems so essential - so imperative? ~ David Rynick

The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass. ~ Dogen

We're constantly waking up to what we're about, what we're really doing in our lives. And the fact is, that's painful. But there's no possibility of freedom without this pain. ~ Charlotte Joko Beck

In the zazen posture, your mind and body have, great power to accept things as they are, whether agreeable or disagreeable.
In our scriptures (Samyuktagama Sutra, volume 33), it is said that there are four kinds of horses: excellent ones, good ones, poor ones, and bad ones. The best horse will run slow and fast, right and left, at the driver's will, before it sees the shadow of the whip; the second best will run as well as the first one does, just before the whip reaches its skin; the third one will run when it feels pain on its body; the fourth will run after the pain penetrates to the marrow of its bones. You can imagine how difficult it is for the fourth one to learn how to run! ~ Shunryu Suzuki

if my memory serves me right, here is my genealogical line: Boccaccio, Petronius, Rabelais, Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Maeterlinck, Romain Rolland, Plotinus, Heraclitus, Nietzsche, Dostoievsky (and other Russian writers of the Nineteenth Century), the ancient Greek dramatists, theElizabethan dramatists (excluding Shakespeare), Theodore Dreiser, Knut Hamsun, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Elie Faure, Oswald Spengler, Marcel Proust, Van Gogh, the Dadaists and Surrealists, Balzac, Lewis Carroll, Nijinsky, Rimbaud, Blaise Cendrars, Jean Giono, Celine, everything I read on Zen Buddhism, everything I read about China, India, Tibet, Arabia, Africa, and of course the Bible, the men who wrote it and especially the men who made the King James version, for it was the language of the Bible rather than its "message" which I got first and which I will never shake off. ~ Henry Miller

Although Buddhism is unattainable, we vow to attain it.If it is unattainable, how can we attain it? But we should! That is Buddhism. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

I had joked about my bones being found by the roadside. Notify the four winds. Up here i might never be found. Keen-eyed vultures would pick the bones clean. Wind and rain would bleach them and in time they'd dissolve into the earth.
I looked up, and a gust of wind swirled the mist, and i saw that glint of gold, so close now, just up ahead. one last effort, to haul and drag myself up over ragged rocks, and at last I stood, breath rasping, limbs shaking, my body one long ache, covered in grime and thick greasy sweat, in front of Hakuyu's cave. The patch of colour I'd seen was a simple bamboo blind, yellowed with age, and painted on it was the outline of a dragon, and the dragon's eye was a dot of gold. That was what had led me all this way. ~ Alan Spence

Life is a vast, unknowable movement of wholeness with no one separate from it and nothing outside of it. ~ Toni Packer

If you are lost in a forest at night, you can follow the North Star to find your way out. You follow the North Star, but your goal is to get back home; it's not to arrive at the North Star. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

When you touch this basic nature of human life you feel relief. This is your final abode, your terminal station. If you take the train of human life, finally you arrive at the terminal station. It seems to be a dead end, but it is not the usual dead end. When you reach that terminal station it is the end, but it is also the beginning. At that dead end something happens. A new life comes up. From this basic place you can go anywhere - to the north, to the west, to the south, to the east - everywhere. Your life is open in all directions. ~ Dainin Katagiri

Belief is at best an educated, informed conjecture about Reality. ~ Steve Hagen

Always stay in your own movie. ~ Ken Kesey

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

Zen Buddhism is a discipline where belief isn't necessary. ~ David Sylvian

If you wish to have children, please do something for the world you will bring them into. That will make you someone who works for peace, in one way or another. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Render unto meditation the things that are meditation's, and unto medication the things that are medication's. ~ Barry Graham

In zazen, leave your front door and your back door open. Let thoughts come and go. Just don't serve them tea. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

Taking it all in all, Zen is emphatically a matter of personal experience; if anything can be called radically empirical, it is Zen. No amount of reading, no amount of teaching, no amount of contemplation will ever make one a Zen master. Life itself must be grasped in the midst of its flow; to stop it for examination and analysis is to kill it, leaving its cold corpse to be embraced. ~ D.T. Suzuki

We die, he said.
We die, I said. And kn owing this how do we live?
Knowing this, we live.
We live. ~ Alan Spence

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

[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

There's no rule in the end, but only the situation and the inclination of your mind ~ Steve Hagen

If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it? ~ Dogen

In short, zazen is seeing this world from the casket, without me. ~ Kosho Uchiyama

Life gives you exactly what you need to awaken. ~ T. Scott McLeod

They justly compare Zen to lightning. The rapidity, however, does not constitute Zen; its naturalness, its freedom from artificialities, its being expressive of life itself, its originality - these are the essential characteristics of Zen. ~ D.T. Suzuki

Zen probably won't solve a single one of our problems. What it might do is help us relate differently to what we consider problems. ~ Barry Graham

In a universe whose fundamental principle is relativity rather than warfare there is no purpose because there is no victory to be won, no end to be attained. For every end, as the world itself shows, is an extreme, an opposite, and exists only in relation to it other end. Because the world is not going anywhere there is no hurry. One may as well "take it easy" like nature itself [ ... ]. ~ Alan W. Watts

Truth is not ... something to believe or disbelieve. The things we believe are always less than Truth[.] ~ Steve Hagen

Patience is the river that finds its way to the sea, by flowing through many confluences. ~ Mladen Đorđević

Think with your whole body. ~ Taisen Deshimaru

When we hear the sound of the pine trees on a windy day, perhaps the wind is just blowing, and the pine tree is just standing in the wind. That is all they are doing. But the people who listen to the wind in the tree will write a poem, or will feel something unusual. That is, I think, the way everything is. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

Old age and death are in the natural course of things. There is nothing a doctor can do about them. ~ Muso Soseki

We can only be here. We can't leave. We are always here. ~ Steve Hagen

So, without telling any of my Zen-snob buddies, I liked to pretend everything was the Pure Land, that my life was already perfect as it was. ~ Jaimal Yogis

[F]or Zen there is no duality, no conflict between the natural element of chance and the human element of control. The constructive powers of the human mind are no more artificial than the formative actions of plants or bees, so that from the standpoint of Zen it is no contradiction to say that artistic technique is discipline in spontaneity and spontaneity in discipline. ~ Alan W. Watts

Good times come and go. And bad times do the same. ~ Steve Hagen

If he hadn't become a Buddhist monk, Sawaki Roshi would have been successful in a worldly sense in business, politics, or the military. Instead, he devoted his life to wholeheartedly practicing Dogen Zenji's just sitting, or shikantaza, which according to him was good for nothing. For him, social climbing in pursuit of fame and profit was meaningless. The Japanese expression for "waste" is bonifuru, which means "sacrifice," "lose all," or "ruin." So when we say he wasted his life, we use the expression in a paradoxical way - like saying that zazen is good for nothing. ~ Kosho Uchiyama

Forever is not an idea or a concept, it is reality. All of the things here come from forever. We call forever nirvana in Zen. ~ Frederick Lenz

How much does he lack himself who must have many things? ~ Sen No Rikyu

I am infinitely saddened to find myself suddenly surrounded in the west by a sense of terrible loss of nerve, a retreat from knowledge into–into what? Into Zen Buddhism; into falsely profound questions … into extrasensory perception and mystery. They do not lie along the line of what we are now able to know if we devote ourselves to it: an understanding of man himself. ~ Jacob Bronowski

At a first glance, medical psychology seems to have nothing to do with religion. But at its depth it provides a new, though at the same time primordial, perspective on what should be the subject matter of religion. It is both a criticism and an approval of religion. It is in and through the soul that problems of the world reveal themselves as world problems. ~ Polly Young-Eisendrath

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground. ~ Buddha

It is the rub that polishes the jewel," Enso Roshi says. "Nobody ever gets to nirvana without going through samsara. Nobody ever gets to heaven, without going through hell. The center of all things, the truth, is surrounded by demons. ~ T. Scott McLeod

The buddha-dharma ... is about directly seeing Truth, prior to forming any ideas about it. It is about responding to each particular situation as it comes ... , not according to some ... program of dos and don'ts. ~ Steve Hagen

To practice Zen Buddhism is to train oneself to eliminate hatred, anger and selfishness and to develop loving-kindness towards all. ~ Thich Thien-An

Suzuki's works on Zen Buddhism are among the best contributions to the knowledge of living Buddhism ... We cannot be sufficiently grateful to the author, first for the fact of his having brought Zen closer to Western understanding, and secondly for the manner in which he has achieved this task. ~ D.T. Suzuki

It is necessary to have a very liberal and simultaneously very conservative mentality to practice Tantric Zen. ~ Frederick Lenz

As a matter of face, Zen is at present most fashionable in America among those who are least concerned with moral discipline. Zen has, indeed, become for us a symbol of moral revolt. It is true, the Zen-man's contempt for conventional and formalistic social custom is a healthy phenomenon, but it is healthy only because it presupposes a spiritual liberty based on freedom from passion, egotism and self-delusion. A pseudo-Zen attitude which seeks to justify a complete moral collapse with a few rationalizations based on the Zen Masters is only another form of bourgeois self-deception. It is not an expression of healthy revolt, but only another aspect of the same lifeless and inert conventionalism against which it appears to be protesting. ~ Thomas Merton

Scientism proposes that scientific investigation is nothing more than the accumulation of 'facts'. The question thus arises: what actually are 'facts'? They are not simply existing there, waiting for scientific investigation. Only a little phenomenological reflection reveals that they show themselves as facts because of the construction of, or at least the correlation with, what is usually called mind.
Mind thus is a fundamental fact. It is psychology that reveals this truth. ~ Polly Young-Eisendrath

[E]ven in getting the wonderful things we long for, we tend to live in want of something more[.] ~ Steve Hagen

Careful!
Even moonlit dewdrops,
If you're lured to watch,
Are a wall before the Truth.
- Sogyo ~ Sogyo

There are things that I value now that I didn't when I first went over there, like Zen Buddhism, which has become part of my life over the last couple years. ~ Matthew Sweet

Imagine you're at a movie, and the person sitting in front of you is so huge and fat you can't see the screen because he's completely blocking your view. He's also talking loudly, so you can't hear the movie.

That person is you. You can't see the perfection of your life, as it is right now, because you're in your own way. ~ Barry Graham

[I]t is rather the past and the future which are the fleeting illusions, and the present which is eternally real. We discover that the linear succession of time is a convention of our single-track verbal thinking, of a consciousness which interprets the world by grasping little pieces of it, calling them things and events. But every such grasp of the mind excludes the rest of the world, so that this type of consciousness can get an approximate vision of the whole only through a series of grasps, one after the other. ~ Alan W. Watts

In Christianity we seem to be too conscious of God, though we say that in him we live and move and have our being. Zen wants to have this last trace of God-consciousness, if possible, obliterated. That is why Zen masters advise us not to linger where the Buddha is, and to pass quickly away where he is not. ~ D.T. Suzuki

Zen Buddhism, for example, as practiced by Suzuki, the excellent Japanese mystic, has nothing to do with the superstitious and predjudiced Buddhism that infested Asia for centuries. Sufism, as boasted by the subtle Gurdjeff, totally differs from the Islamism that shouts death to the "infidels." The doctrine of Vivekananda, inspired by his master Ramakrishna, is nothing like the Hinduism that suffocated India for centures of superstious and stupid passivity; the noble mysticism of Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher, is nothing like the bloody cultural narrowness and tribal elitism of the mosaic orthodoxy. ~ Marcelo Ramos Motta

With passions stilled and one's nature firm, all destinies are in harmony; When the full moon of contemplation is reached you will be pure. ~ Wu Cheng'en

Zen purposes to discipline the mind itself, to make it its own master, through an insight into its proper nature. This getting into the real nature of one's own mind or soul is the fundamental object of Zen Buddhism. Zen, therefore, is more than meditation and Dhyana in its ordinary sense. The discipline of Zen consists in opening the mental eye in order to look into the very reason of existence. ~ D.T. Suzuki

We do so much, we run so quickly, the situation is difficult, and many people say, "Don't just sit there, do something." But doing more things may make the situation worse. So you should say, "Don't just do something, sit there." Sit there, stop, be yourself first, and begin from there. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

The light is already there. In Zen Buddhism there's a little speck of dust on the mirror, and that's us. ~ Frederick Lenz

MEDITATION is not to get out of society, to escape from society, but to prepare for a reentry into society ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Before we were born we had no feeling; we were one with the universe. This is called "mind-only," or "essence of mind," or "big mind," After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falling from the waterfall is separated by the wind and rocks, then we have feeling. You have difficulty because you have feeling. You attach to the feeling you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created. When you do not realize that you are one with the river, or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact we have no fear of death anymore, and we have no actual difficulty in our life. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

[F]ast intercommunication between points is making all points the same point. ~ Alan W. Watts

Near Tokyo lived a great Samurai warrior, now old, who decided to teach Zen Buddhism to young people. In spite of his age, the legend was that he could defeat any adversary. ~ Paulo Coelho

[T]he joy of travel is not nearly so much in getting where one wants to go as in the unsought surprises which occur on the journey. ~ Alan W. Watts

After all, what Buddhism offers as a solution is universalised indifference - a learning of how to withdraw from too much empathy. This is why Buddhism can so easily turn into the very opposite of universal compassion: the advocacy of a ruthless military attitude, which is what the fate of Zen Buddhism aptly demonstrates. ~ Slavoj Zizek

Everydayness perfumes the depth of life, the huge ocean where all are interconnected, and makes your life mature. Then a new life arises from the depth and appears on the surface. So, by taking care of everydayness, you don't make just the surface mature; you also make the depth of your life mature. ~ Dainin Katagiri

A student, filled with emotion and crying, implored, "Why is there so much suffering?"
Suzuki Roshi replied, "No reason. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

Clear sight has nothing to do with trying to see; it is just the realization that that the eyes will take in every detail all by themselves, for so long as they open they can hardly prevent the light from reaching them. In the same way, there is no difficulty in being fully aware of the eternal present as soon as it is seen that one cannot possibly be aware of anything else - that in concrete fact there is no past or future. ~ Alan W. Watts

Consideration of others extends beyond just other human beings to include all things - tables, cushions, even toilet paper. We must be considerate of all things and treat them with great appreciation and respect. ~ Dainin Katagiri

In Zen Buddhism an action is considered good when it brings happiness and well-being to oneself and others, evil when it brings suffering and harm to oneself and others. ~ Thich Thien-An

Zen has a pronounced iconoclastic tendency, and regards the study of texts, doctrines, and dogmas as a potential hindrance to spiritual awakening, relying instead on humour, spontaneity, unconventionality, poetry, and other forms of artistic expression to communicate the idea of enlightenment ~ Damien Keown

Zen Buddhism does not preach. Sermons remain words. It waits until people feel stifled and insecure, driven by a secret longing. ~ Eugen Herrigel

[I]mpermanence [is] the very thing that makes [life] vibrant, wonderful, and alive. ~ Steve Hagen

The most important thing Zen Buddhism teaches us is that we are already originally enlightened. This must never be forgotten. ~ Clara Taylor

KODO SAWAKI ~ To practice the buddha way is not to let our minds wander but to become one with what we're doing. This is called zanmai (or samadhi) and shikan (or "just doing"). Eating rice isn't preparation for shitting; shitting isn't preparation for making manure. And yet these days people think that high school is preparation for college and college is preparation for a good job. ~ Kosho Uchiyama

One must be deeply aware of the impermanence of the world. ~ Dogen

Release seems to come only when we allow ourselves to be truly stuck - when we find ourselves all out of tricks and skillful means. As we allow ourselves to surrender to the prosaic and the holy in the particular form of this moment, we open ourselves to the grace of letting things be - the grace that functions effortlessly and is, indeed, the very fabric of our life. ~ David Rynick

Zazen is indeed the posture of "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" (Luke 18:13). In our zazen we realize the illusory nature of thoughts, and no matter how powerful they might be, we don't chase after them, try to get rid of them, or act on them. So zazen is the posture of "We know that our old self was crucified with him" (Romans 6:6) or "I have been crucified with Christ" (Galatians 2:19). In the end, zazen is the purest expression of "Be still, and know that I am God!" (Psalms 46:10). ~ Kosho Uchiyama

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 impossibility of arriving at Truth by giving up your own authority and following the lights of others. Such a path will only lead to an opinion. ~ Steve Hagen

SHOHAKU OKUMURA ~ If we feel we're becoming enlightened, that's delusion. ~ Kosho Uchiyama

To have some deep feeling about Buddhism is not the point; we just do what we should do, like eating supper and going to bed. This is Buddhism. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

The only 'elephant' left in the room is love. ~ Benjamin Aubrey Myers

There were so many beliefs which we had about the world, which then influenced everything, everything, about how we saw the world and interacted in the world and were with others. Everything. It was profound to me, amazing, the ramifications, the implications, the far-reaching impact that one's beliefs could have on the world. It was actually mind-blowing for me. Figuratively speaking. Like, it was just, holy shit. Look at that. And nobody, hardly anybody sees it. They're just ideas. Ideas. And yet, I'd believed them for so long, and still, was still shirking free of them. How was it that we believed in them, so readily, so easily? ~ T. Scott McLeod

Life is a whirlwind of many opportunities. Choose to embrace all of them in deepest gratitude. Learn to forgive yourself and honour the heart that beats within you, as well as the head that rests on your shoulders. Learn how to believe in people again and not be judging or cynical to various beliefs.
We are all of one light on this one Earth, and loving humanity makes all the difference. ~ Michelle Cruz-Rosado

Question everything, even the question mark, that shepherd's crook floating in the air above that small round rock

If you - stubbornly - still wish to be unhappy,
maybe you can grasp it. ~ Dick Allen

We imagine that things come into existence, endure for a while, and then pass out of existence ~ Steve Hagen

It is both dangerous and absurd for our world to be a group of communions mutually excommunicate. ~ Alan W. Watts

It is not simply a transient happiness that you experience in meditation that creates balance; it is a transformative light. Inner light is the most powerful thing there is. ~ Frederick Lenz

He reached into his jacket pocket. Over the years, people had often commented on his ability to produce exactly the right item from his pockets at exactly the right time. Some had speculated that his pockets were extensions of the TARDIS, others had guessed he was just lucky. But then, they'd never read Yeltstrom's Karma and Flares: The Importance of Fashion Sense to the Modern Zen Master.
They didn't appreciate the things a sentient life-form could achieve, if he was totally at one with the lining of his jacket. ~ Lawrence Miles

The bands of perception vary greatly. There is the human band of perception. There are lots of different bands of perception. Simply because we are in one band of perception, doesn't mean others are not there. ~ Frederick Lenz

We must conduct research and then accept the results. If they don't stand up to experimentation, Buddha's own words must be rejected. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

In fact, no form of death places a greater burden on society than suicide, for the act of suicide is the way a person seeks to resolve his alienation from a cooperative society. ~ Shinmon Aoki

This is what it means to be mindful. To watch the thoughts as they come and go without judgment while completely accepting what arises in the present moment. ~ Chris Matakas

The way our world is set up, a higher economic priority is given to things that bespeak a greater refinement. It is just a determination that was made, to make money. ~ Frederick Lenz

Your actions create an "energy vortex" that draws in the necessary ingredients for your venture. ~ Chris Prentiss