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Quote by Bernard Faure

“If there is some truth in the Zen dictum that the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon, then it follows that the notion of pure experience is by no means the pure experience itself. Assuming that such an experience can be found, any attempt to characterize it, even the least reifying one, will betray it.”

Quote by Bernard Faure

Book:Chan Insights and Oversights

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Chan Insights and Oversights

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“As it is known to us through East Asian sources, Chan/Zen is the product of two traditions that sometimes overlap, sometimes contradict or ignore each other: namely, the Buddhist orthodoxy the Sino-Japanese historiographical tradition.”

Book:Chan Insights and Oversights

Source: Chan Insights and Oversights

“Although Hīnayāna disciplines and traditions continue to exert their influence in the daily activities of Vietnamese Buddhists, Zen comes closest to expressing the Vietnamese character, and as such, their attitude in all walks of life can best be described as a “Zen outlook.”

Zen Vietnamese Buddhism

Book:Buddhism & Zen in Vietnam: In Relation to the Development of Buddhism in Asia

Source: Buddhism & Zen in Vietnam: In Relation to the Development of Buddhism in Asia

“As Zen is a discipline and not a philosophy, it directly deals with life; and this is where Zen has developed its most characteristic features.”

Book:The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk

Source: The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk

“To regard Zen as a form of asceticism and nothing more will be a grievous mistake. What Zen aims at is to reduce the claims of the body to a minimum in order to divert their course to a higher realm of activities. To torture the body is not its object, nor is it its object to gain merit and thereby to lay one's fortune in heaven.”

Book:The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk

Source: The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk

“What properly constitutes the study of Zen in the Zendo life is to study on the one hand the writings or sayings or in some cases the doings of the ancient masters and on the other to practise meditation. This practising is called in Japanese to do zazen, while the studying of the masters consists in attending the discourses given by the teacher of the Zendo known as Rōshi.”

Book:The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk

Source: The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk

“Naturally, there are not many graduates of the Zendo life, and this is indeed in the very nature of Zen; for Zen is meant for the élite, for specially gifted minds, and not for the masses.”

Book:The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk

Source: The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk

“Learn to live deeply, and realise that all experiences, good or bad are transient, and opportunities for liberation.”

Life Philosophy Wisdom Spiritual Quotes Mindfulness Zen Meeta Ahluwalia Meetaahluwalia

Author:Meeta Ahluwalia

“what is it about the sky on cold wintry nights in the morning there was dew on trees.”

Poetry Sky Winter Zen Poems Dew Meeta Ahluwalia Meetaahluwalia Zen Quotes

Author:Meeta Ahluwalia

“Whatever one's reaction, it is hard to remain neutral toward a religious tradition that purportedly depicts its most revered of teachers as torching their sacred religious icons, bullying their students into enlightenment, rejecting the value of all the scriptures of Buddhism, even denying the worth of Zen itself.”

Book:The Zen Monastic Experience

Source: The Zen Monastic Experience

“Much of this picture of Zen derives from portrayals found in such normative texts of the tradition as the lamp anthologies (Ch. teng-lu), huge collections of the hagiographies and basic instructions of hundreds of masters in the various lineages of Zen. But such texts were never intended to serve as guides to religious practice or as records of daily practice; they were instead mythology and hagiography, which offered the student an idealized paradigm of the Zen spiritual experience. Many scholars of Zen have mistakenly taken these lamp anthologies at face value as historical documents and presumed that they provide an accurate account of how Zen monks of the premodern era pursued their religious vocations. They do not.”

Book:The Zen Monastic Experience

Source: The Zen Monastic Experience