Zen Monks Quotes

My comic sense, although deliberately Americanized, is, in its intent, much closer related to the crazy wisdom of Zen monks and the goofy genius of Taoist masters than it is to, say, the satirical gibes on Saturday Night Live. It has both a literary and a metaphysical function. ~ Tom Robbins

Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one's heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations - there you will find the essence of true art, religion, and science. ~ Santoka Taneda

When we sleep on someone else's pillow, we sometimes find ourselves having that person's dreams. If a married couple switches sides of the bed, for example, he will have her dreams for a while and she will have his. Nothing of the sort occurs in a hotel bed, naturally, for the simple reason that no one person has slept there long enough to leave a psychic imprint. Is the connection to the bedding place or to the space below it? Perhaps we draw up trans-neurological info-bits from the underworld to form dreams the way that exposed metal draws down oxygen molecules from the air to form rust. Dreams, the, may be a form of psychic oxidation. Each morning, the greasy rag of wakefulness wipes us clean. Sooner or later, however, we rust completely through, at which point we lose tensility, conductivity, and clear definition; turn senile or go bonkers; fade away. If we applied the rag more rigorously, this might not happen. which is why the message of Miho's Zen monks-the message of mystic masters everywhere-was and is, "Wake up! Wake up! ~ Tom Robbins

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

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

calendar.We insert the mysteries of Christ's life into the seasons and the times of the year, beginning with Advent and carry on to Pentecost, from November to June approximately. This allows us to live these mysteries in ways which give access to the full reality of resurrection. Christianity is not a new religion, it is a new form of existence. It is the introduction of the dimension of resurrection into the spatio-temporal continuum of ordinary daily life. ~ Monks Of Glenstal Abbey

Monk's reasons for dancing during a performance: "I get tired sitting down at the piano! That way I can dig the rhythm better. ~ Thelonious Monk

Our reality is colored by our vibration and belief systems. In other words, the experiences we have in the world with other people are dictated by the energy we bring with us wherever we go. ~ Alaric Hutchinson

this quintessential Zen statement: "There is no right and no wrong, but right is right and wrong is wrong. ~ Joseph Goldstein

Zen is about breaking out of your ideas and experiencing life and not ideas. ~ Frederick Lenz

Larry smiled a trifle ruefully.
"Like Rolla [who is?], I've come too late into a world too old. I should have been born in the Middle Ages when faith was a matter of course; then my way would have been clear to me and I'd have sought to enter the order. I couldn't believe. I wanted to believe, but I couldn't believe in a God who wasn't better than the ordinary decent man. The monks told me that God had created the world for his glorification. That didn't seem to me a very worthy object. Did Beethoven create his symphonies for his glorification? I don't believe it. I believe he created them because the music in his soul demanded expression and then all he tried to do was to make them as perfect as he knew how.
I used to listen to the monks repeating the Lord's Prayer; I wondered how they could continue to pray without misgiving to their heavenly father to give them their daily bread. Do children beseech their earthly father to give them sustenance? They expect him to do it, they neither feel gratitude to him for doing so nor need to, and we have only blame for a man who brings children into the world that he can't or won't provide for. It seemed to me that if an omnipotent creator was not prepared to provide his creatures with the necessities, material and spiritual, of existence he'd have done better not to create them."
"Dear Larry," I said, "I think it's just as well you weren't born in the Middle ages. You'd undoubtedly have perished at the stake."
He s ~ W. Somerset Maugham

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

The worst thing was that even if you did your own job, if your teammate failed to do theirs, you could be blown away along with them. And yet, if you focused only on strengthening your own defenses, someone else could get killed. All we could do was trust our teammates, and those who failed were mercilessly culled. We'd been thrown into an extreme situation that was just like the front lines. In the end, we barely slept at all. ~ Carlo Zen

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

Like vanishing dew,
a passing apparition
or the sudden flash
of lightning
already gone
thus should one regard one's self. ~ Ikkyu

Dare to be vulnerable, walk outside without your armor on and say YES to your heart. ~ Alaric Hutchinson

The real Zen of the old Chinese masters was wu-shih, or "no fuss." ~ Alan Watts

Guides were Franciscan monks, sole custodians of the holy places after 1230, who recited the history and traditions associated with each town or monument or site of Biblical events to parties of visitors as they arrived. More ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

Some people live as though they are already dead. There are people moving around us who are consumed by their past, terrified of their future, and stuck in their anger and jealousy. They are not alive; they are just walking corpses. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

For some reason when I type the word "love" in my iPad it keeps autocorrecting to "live". I find it oddly profound. My ipad IS. My iPad is ZEN:
"Only the iPad that autocorrects can write the true thing. ~ Annastacia Dickerson

Regarding R. H. Blyth: Blyth's four volume Haiku became especially popular at this time [1950's] because his translations were based on the assumption that the haiku was the poetic expression of Zen. Not surprisingly, his books attracted the attention of the Beat school, most notably writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac, all of whom had a prior interest in Zen. ~ Reginald Horace Blyth

It is a wretched thing that the young men of today are so contriving and so proud of their material posessions. Men with contriving hearts are lacking in duty. Lacking in duty, they will have no self-respect. ~ Tsunetomo Yamamoto

To have Zen is to be in a state of pure sensation. It is to be freed from the grip of concepts, to see through them. This is not the same as rejecting conceptual thinking. Thoughts and words are in the world and are as natural as flowers. It is a mistake therefore to think that Zen is anti-intellectual. ~ Alan Keightley

I was a linear thinker, and according to Zen linear thinking is nothing but a delusion, one of the many that keep us unhappy. Reality is nonlinear, Zen says. No future, no past. All is now. ~ Phil Knight

The oft-repeated assertion that Islam "preserved" classical knowledge and then graciously passed it on to Europe is baseless. Ancient Greek texts and Greek culture were never "lost" to be somehow "recovered" and "transmitted" by Islamic scholars, as so many academic historians and journalists continue to write: these texts were always there, preserved and studied by the monks and lay scholars of the Greek Roman Empire and passed on to Europe and to the Islamic empire at various times. ~ Darío Fernández-Morera

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

Zen is a study. It's a discipline. It involves the active use of will to make things happen or not happen. These are the secrets of power. ~ Frederick Lenz

You see something or hear a sound, and there you have everything just as it is.
[ ... ]
Whatever you do, it should be an expression of the same deep activity. We should appreciate what we are doing. There is no preparation for something else. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

What is Zen? Zen is looking at things with the eye of God, that is, becoming the thing's eyes so that it looks at itself with our eyes. ~ Reginald Horace Blyth

It may be fashionable to assert that all is holy, but not many are willing to haul ass to church four or five times a day to sing about it. It's not for the faint of heart. ~ Kathleen Norris

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

Meryl Streep is expert at only using the requisite amount of energy to express her character, not an ounce too little or too much. She's Zen and doesn't know she's Zen. That's very Zen! ~ Frederick Lenz

The principle of avoiding conflict and never opposing an aggressor's strength head-on is the essence of aikido. We apply the same principle to problems that arise in life. The skilled aikidoist is as elusive as the truth of Zen; he makes himself into a koan - a puzzle which slips away the more one tries to solve it. He is like water in that he falls through the fingers of those who try to clutch him. Water does not hesitate before it yields, for the moment the fingers begin to close it moves away, not of its own strength, but by using the pressure applied to it. It is for this reason, perhaps, that one of the symbols for aikido is water. ~ Joe Hyams

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

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

Perfection itself is not the ultimate goal
but the ultimate condition of life. ~ Eric Micha'el Leventhal

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

All is lost! Monks, Monks, Monks! So, now all is gone - Empire, Body, and Soul!. ~ Henry VIII Of England

I am everything. I am nothing. I am powerful. I am forgotten. ~ Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Honestly.I don't understand Zen.It seems if you don't answer properly,or if you are rude,people get enlightened. ~ Jerry Pinto

What makes human life
which is inseparable from this moment
so precious is its fleeting nature. And not that it doesn't last but that it never returns again. ~ Steve Hagen

I tried Zen and Ching, numerology, tarot cards and astrology. I tried to look back into the Bible, and could not find anything. At this time I did not know anything about Islam, and then, what I regarded as a miracle occurred. My brother had visited the mosque in Jerusalem, and was greatly impressed that while on the one hand it throbbed with life. ~ Cat Stevens

There isn't a Zen zone on this side of the planet that could calm me down. ~ Summer Lane

The energy of our thoughts, words, actions, and emotions collectively create the frequency of our vibrational aura. ~ Alaric Hutchinson

Shall you live authentically who you are or will you spend your allotted living the life of someone you imagine your self to be? ~ Earl R. Smith II

My blogging life is basically goalless. I like the zen nature of that, and paradoxically, it improves results. ~ Seth Godin

In the name of Him Who created and
sustains the world, the Sage Who
endowed tongue with speech.
He attains no honor who turns the face from the doer of His mercy.
The kings of the earth prostate themselves before Him in supplication.
He seizes not in haste the disobedient, nor drives away the penitent with
violence. The two worlds are as a drop of water in the ocean of His knowledge.
He withholds not His bounty though His
servants sin; upon
the surface of the earth has He spread a feast, in which both friend and foe may share.
Peerless He is, and His kingdom is eternal. Upon the head of one He placed a crown another he hurled from the throne to the ground.
The fire of His friend He turned into a
flower garden; through the water of the
Nile He sended His foes to perdition.
Behind the veil He sees all, and conceal
ed our faults with His own goodness.

He is near to them that are downcast,
and accepts the prayers of them that
lament.
He knows of the things that exist not, of secrets that are untold.
He causes the moon and the sun to revolve, and spreads water upon the
earth.
In the heart of a stone hath He placed
a jewel; from nothing had He created all that is.
Who can reveal the secret of His qualities; what eye can see the limits of His
beauty?
The bird of thought cannot soar to the height of His presence, nor the hand ~ Saadi

Many coping strategies have a Zen simplicity. Instead of resolving chaos, find beauty and happiness amid chaos. I am reminded of a friend who said that when she found out her husband couldn't fill her needs, she changed her needs; ~ Andrew Solomon