Zen Proverb Quotes

To follow the path look to the master follow the master walk with the master see through the master become the master. ~ Sengcan

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

To say I woke up one day and reached a point where I no longer cared about the pains to befall me would be a lie. Nor can I say that I have ever fully forgiven those who willfully did me harm. On a deep, internal battlefield, I wrestle with the thought that I have been robbed of any chance of normalcy by the losses suffered. Therapists and gurus alike tell us to, "Let go or be dragged," as Zen proverb urges - to forgive for our own sake. But, in my experience, there is no letting go and forgiveness is transient. My inability to be free of it all isn't for lack of an evolved consciousness on my part. I've "done the work" to process it all; rather, it is my irreconcilable, inescapable humanity that causes to clutch the pain close to me. ~ L.M. Browning

If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are. ~ Zen Proverb

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

When you get there, there isn't any there there. ~ Gertrude Stein

Let your mind wander in the pure and simple. Be one with the infinite. Let all things take their course. ~ Zhuangzi

A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it. ~ Dogen

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

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

When walking, walk. When eating, eat. ~ Zen Proverb

A river too pure, yields no fish. ~ Zen Proverb

The greatest effort is not concerned with results. ~ Atisa

The most important point is to accept yourself and stand on your two feet. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. ~ Gautama Buddha

Zen phrase says The instant you speak about a thing you miss the mark. ~ Fritjof Capra

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

I'm simply saying that there is a way to be sane. I'm saying that you can get rid of all this insanity created by the past in you. Just by being a simple witness of your thought processes.

It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts, passing before you. Just witnessing, not interfering not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness. The moment you say "this is good, this is bad," you have already jumped onto the thought process.

It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are in for a great surprise, that you are not the mind, that you are the witness, a watcher.

And this process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion. Because as you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start disappearing. You are, but the mind is utterly empty.

That's the moment of enlightenment. That is the moment that you become for the first time an unconditioned, sane, really free human being. ~ Osho

Variety is the spice of life. ~ American Proverb.

Hard to restrain, unstable is this mind; it flits wherever it lists. Good it is to control the mind. A controlled mind brings happiness. ~ Gautama Buddha

When we ourselves are not truly in a place of peace and we go out and try to create peace in the world, it becomes a fragmented and sometimes even corrupt form of peace. This happens because only peace can create peace, and unless we are the embodiment of it, we are projecting our bias of what peace should look like onto other people's lives. To be at peace means to accept reality as is. Embodying peace is, in fact, the very essence of what it means to be free, as well as offering this freedom to others. ~ Alaric Hutchinson

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

This, then, is what counts: a lightning reaction which has no further need of conscious observation. In this respect at least the pupil makes himself independent of all conscious purpose. ~ Eugen Herrigel

As the old Zen saying reminds us, the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. ~ Helen Palmer Geisel

Consistent or inconsistent, no one is exempt from the mystery of the self. Probably we are all inconsistent. The world is just too complicated for a person to be able to afford the luxury of reconciling all of his beliefs with each other. Tension and confusion are important in a world where many decisions must be made quickly. Miguel de Unamuno once said, 'If a person never contradicts himself, it must be that he says nothing.' I would say that we all are in the same boast as the Zen master who, after contradicting himself several times in a row, said to the confused Doko, 'I cannot understand myself.'. ~ Douglas R. Hofstadter

Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the most beloved Buddhist teachers in the West, a rare combination of mystic, poet, scholar, and activist. His luminous presence and the simple, compassionate clarity of his writings have touched countless lives. ~ Joanna Macy

It's like zen. Only not as subtle. ~ J.J. Connolly

No snowflake ever lands in the wrong place. ~ Zen Saying

ALRIGHT then, be a Zen monk. But you wait and see. You'll be happy and bright. You'll laugh. People will envy and ridicule you. You won't care. (sigh) ~ Lew Welch

There is an old Zen saying about seeing the moon's reflection in a pond. If the surface of the pond is agitated and full of ripples, the moon's reflection won't look anything like the moon. That agitation, those ripples, are your constant thoughts and feelings, which disturb your ability to perceive truth. When the pond is perfectly still, however -when your thoughts and feelings withdraw and stay quiet -then you can see the moon's reflection. You can perceive the truth. ~ Eve Adamson

A big group of daily friends or a white painted house with bills and mirrors, are not a necessity to me - but an intelligent conversation while sharing another coffee, is. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

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

Real Freedom is to not feel limited when wearing this Zen robe, this troublesome formal robe. Similarly, in our busy life we should wear this civilization without being bothered by it, without ignoring it, without being caught by it. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

…What's with you getting so quiet all of a sudden? Started remembering last night a bit, have we?"
- Kirishima Zen ~ Miyako Fujisaki

El hambre agudiza el ingenio," said Raphael.
Hunger sharpens the wit.
"Good proverb," said Magnus. "However, like most proverbs, it sounds wise and yet does not actually clarify anything. ~ Cassandra Clare

A broken hand works, but not a broken heart. ~ Persian Proverb

What initially began as a couple of pieces that fitted together from first dates, slowly expands with time and for a moment the puzzle actually looks like it will be realized. Heartbreak is when the puzzle is nearly finished and you suddenly realize that pieces are missing. Perhaps they were never in the box in the first place or perhaps they went missing along the way; regardless, the puzzle remains undone. You frantically search the box and your surroundings, desperately trying to find the missing pieces, anxiously looking to fill the void, but you search for what cannot be found. ~ Forrest Curran

If you take a mental case into a Zen monastery, they put him in isolation for three weeks; nobody talks to him - just the opposite of psychoanalysis - nobody talks to him, nobody listens to him. They just keep him isolated; somebody goes, absolutely silently, and puts the food there, comes back. He has to live with himself for three weeks ... and miracles have been happening down the ages. Just putting him there for three weeks in isolation, slowly he cools down - no psychoanalysis, no therapy, just isolation. In fact, he was suffering too much from people, from the stress of being in a crowd continually. ~ Osho

What you don't see with your eyes, don't witness with your mouth. Jewish proverb ~ Atticus Aristotle

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

The word for woman is Gy (pronounced hard, as in Guy); it forms itself into Gy-ei for the plural, but the G becomes soft in the plural like Jy-ei. They have a proverb to the effect that this difference in pronunciation is symbolical, for that the female sex is soft in the concrete, but hard to deal with in the individual. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton

I thought: if I die, I hope I get reincarnated into a mosquito so I can bite that fucker kau-kau. ~ Zen Cho

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

Who really can face the future? All you can do is project from the past, even when the past shows that such projections are often wrong. And who really can forget the past? What else is there to know? ~ Robert M. Pirsig

Two monks were once travelling together down a wet and muddy road. The rain was torrential, making it almost impossible to walk along the path. As the two men were trudging along, a beautiful girl dressed in silk appeared. She was unable to cross the path and looked distressed.

"Let me help you", said the older monk. He picked her up and carried her over the mud. His younger male companion did not utter a word that night until they reached their lodging temple. Then after hours of restrained conversation, the younger monk exclaimed: "We monks do not touch females; it is too tempting for us and can create a bad outcome". The older monk looked into the younger monks eyes and said, "I left the girl on the road. Are you still carrying her?"

This ancient Zen story illustrates beautifully how so many of us are trapped in the habit of constantly "re-living" the past in our minds, thus dishonouring the present moment. The young monk wasted hours distressing himself with judgment, speculation, anxiety, resentment and ultimately self-perpetuated unhappiness as a direct result of not being mindful. ~ Christopher Dines

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

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

There is an Arabic proverb that says:
She makes you feel
like a loaf of freshly baked bread.

It is said about
the nicest
kindest
people.
The type of people
who help you
rise. ~ Jasmine Warga

The sun shines, snow falls, mountains rise and valleys sink, night deepens and pales into day, but it is only very seldom that we attend to such things ... When we are grasping the inexpressible meaning of these things, this is life, this is living. To do this twenty-four hours a day is the Way of Haiku. It is having life more abundantly. ~ R.H. Blyth

Writing doesn't come easily to anyone, I think, certainly not to me. But pressure and practice does lend a certain fluency, I think - the more sentences you write, the more sentences you have written, if that slightly Zen confection makes any sense. ~ Adam Gopnik

Give a man a proverb
and he'll muse for a moment.
Teach a man to find the verb in every proverb
and he'll walk in wisdom for a lifetime. ~ Cameron Semmens

The right art," cried the Master, "is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede. What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will. You think that what you do not do yourself does not happen. ~ Eugen Herrigel

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. ~ Alan W. Watts

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

Breathe in, breathe out. All the blessings of the universe that we may overlook are contained in the entirety of a breath. Breathe in, breathe out. Each breath is the sun flowering our earth, fresh water filling our oceans, and the blue skies clearing our minds. Infinite emotions are contained within every breath, and by the breath we can always realize the beauty within it all. Breathe in, breathe out. ~ Forrest Curran

they can all stand quiescent in airless venues for extended periods, their eyes' expressions that unique NYC combination of Zen meditation and clinical depression, clearly unhappy but never complaining. ~ David Foster Wallace

The brave may fall, but never yield. ~ Latin Proverb

More grows in the garden, than the gardener knows he has planted ~ Spanish Proverb