Browse 41 quotes about Zazen.
“Just sitting, transcending good or evil, satori or delusion, is the zazen that transcends the sage and the ordinary man.”
Source: Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice
“Although Buddhism is unattainable, we vow to attain it.If it is unattainable, how can we attain it? But we should! That is Buddhism.”
Source: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice
“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).”
Source: The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo
“Nearly all samurai practice Zen - it is the Way of Enlightenment."
"Possibly the light of Zen is so strong that it has blinded me to its virtue." Yoshitoki smiled.
"It is very good discipline for the mind, as the martial arts are for the body." Kenmotsu looked very smug as he said this. "I do Zazen twice a week."
"I think it will do no-one any harm, though personally I find it more pleasant to think than to empty my mind of thought.”
Source: The Samurai's Tale: A Historical Adventure for Kids (Ages 10-12) About a Boy's Journey to Warrior and a Redeemed Legacy
“[W]hen you practise right meditation, you 'cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate your self.”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“The other day, someone visited me and asked, 'I wish to practice zazen under your guidance. But because I live far away, I can’t come to Antaiji very often. I’d like to practice zazen at home. What should I keep in mind to avoid doing zazen in a mistaken way?' I responded, 'If your wife and children say, "Daddy has become nicer since he began to do zazen," then your practice is on the right track.'
Roshi, Kosho Uchiyama. Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo (Kindle Locations 2519-2523). Wisdom Publications. Kindle Edition.”
Source: Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo
“In zazen, leave your front door and your back door open. Let thoughts come and go. Just don't serve them tea.”
“A frog is very interesting. He sits like us, too, you know. But he does not think that he is doing anything so special. When you go to a zendo and sit, you may think you are doing some special thing. While your husband or wife is sleeping, you are practicing zazen! You are doing some special thing, and your spouse is lazy! That may be your understanding of zazen. But look at the frog. A frog also sits like us, but he has no idea of zazen. Watch him. If something annoys him, he will make a face. If something comes along to eat, he will snap it up and eat, and he eats sitting. Actually that is our zazen—not any special thing.”
Source: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice
“Keeping the precepts and observing pure moral conduct is the habit of Buddhists. But even those who haven’t formally received the precepts or have broken them can benefit from doing zazen.”
Source: Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master
“Zazen is a physical practice as much as it a mental one.”
Source: Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master
“When I teach zazen I often tell people that it’s kind of like a yoga class where there is only one posture and you hold it for a very long time.”
Source: Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master
“A quiet room is best for zazen. We shouldn’t eat or drink too much, or too little. Put aside everything else. Don’t think of good or bad. Don’t judge your practice. Stop ruminating and deliberating about stuff. Don’t try to become a Buddha.”
Source: Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master
“People always get worried about whether they’re doing zazen right. But basically if you’re doing it at all, you’re probably doing it right — even if your thoughts won’t stop, even if you’re sleepy or irritable, even if it just feels boring.”
Source: Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master
“One funny thing about zazen is that, unlike most other forms of meditation, we keep our eyes open. This is a way of acknowledging the outside world as part of our practice and as a part of us. If we close our eyes and shut out the outside world, we get a little unbalanced. We can start to believe that what we are is limited to that which is enveloped in what Dōgen likes to call our “skin bag.” Or, conversely, the lack of visual input leads us deeper into the world of our own fantasies and abstractions. By opening our eyes, we are letting in that light that Dōgen says we should shine inward. So although we are shining our light inward, we also accept that there is no hard line that divides ourselves from the outside world, or the rest of the universe.”
Source: Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master
“Although zazen is certainly not all there is to Zen, a Zen which lacks zazen may be said to be no Zen at all.”
Source: The Zen Life
“Zazen is by no means a "quick fix" panacea for all psychological ailments. While it does aim to uproot the core causes of our "normal" human spiritual dis-ease, any "abnormal" mental health issues should be addressed before one is ready to engage in the austere rigors of this spiritual discipline.”
Source: Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhism
“Our society has largely forgotten the importance of bodily posture for alertness, for digestion, and most importantly for one's psychophysical disposition. Zazen reminds the body, as well as the mind, of the beneficial effects of good posture. Moreover, zazen increases physical as well as mental flexibility, and in general it attunes our minds to the needs of the body, allowing the body to mindfully retune itself.”
Source: Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhism
“Try always to keep the right posture, not only when you practice zazen, but in all your activities.”
Source: Zen Mind, Beginners Mind
“To be aware of the meaning of your life, you practice zazen.”
Source: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice
“To practice zazen, Suzuki-roshi often reminded his students, is to study the self. By 1983, the senior priests at Zen Center had logged a lot of hours in the study hall. The work and meditation schedule they kept was famous for its rigor. Typically, they sat for almost two hours every morning, beginning at five, attended a midday service, and sat again for an hour or two in the evening until nine. During the two annual Practice Periods, the daily meditation periods were extended. Once a month, they sat for twelve or fourteen hours—a one-day sesshin (intensive retreat). At the end of each Practice Period, they sat a seven day sesshin—twelve to fourteen hours a day for seven straight days, during which they took their meager meals in the zendo, and slept on their cushions. In fifteen years, Reb, Yvonne, Lew, and the other senior students who'd kept the daily schedule had each sat zazen for at least 10,000 to 15,000 hours.
And yet, by any common-sense standard, the most seasoned meditators at Zen Center repeatedly flunked simple tests of self-awareness. "I wonder," wrote a former Zen Center student in a letter to Yvonne in 1987, "if in some cases doing zazen doesn't augment or aggravate the dissociative process—as if in some way it cauterizes the personality and seals it off, encapsulates it, widens the breach between heart and mind.”
Source: Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center
“Mindful of the passing of time, engage yourself in zazen as though saving your head from fire.”
Source: The Essential Dogen: Writings of the Great Zen Master
“Zazen is not learning to do concentration. It is the dharma gate of great ease and joy. It is undivided practice-realization.”
Source: The Essential Dogen: Writings of the Great Zen Master
“[Question:] Should zazen be practiced by laymen and lay-women, or should it be practiced by home leavers alone?
[Dogen's answer:] The ancestors say, "In understanding buddha dharma, men and women, noble and common people are not distinguished.”
Source: The Essential Dogen: Writings of the Great Zen Master
“When we have difficulties, we might start to practice zazen to find a way out. Some people seek worldly success with meditation, using it as training in concentration, spontaneity, or bravery. Others aspire to be released from everyday life by some kind of enlightenment experience. Either way, we search because we feel a lack.
When we practice zazen with this attitude, what happens in our minds is the same as when we struggle for fame and profit. As long as we practice zazen with seeking mind, we create samsara within our practice.”
Source: The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo
“Zazen should not be defiled by our desires—even the desire for enlightenment or becoming a buddha.”
Source: The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo
“Even if we don't become an expert—always prepared, refined, and elegant like a veteran swordsman, virtuoso Noh actor, or tea master—we're fine, aren't we? What's wrong with toddling and limping along the path of life practicing zazen?”
Source: The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo
“Because I practiced good-for-nothing zazen with devotion, I felt my life was justified. Yet this intensity of practice was possible only when I was young, strong, and healthy. In this way I discovered arrogance in a deep layer of my mind.”
Source: The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo
“Just sitting, which is good for nothing, is the ultimate posture of freedom from greed.”
Source: The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo
“Thirty minutes of sharp, alert sitting is far more beneficial than an hour of sleepy, dull zazen.”
Source: Zen: The Authentic Gate
“Many people wonder about the optimal length for a period of zazen. Sitting a short period of time is by no means less effective than a longer period. Zazen has worth and merit in itself, no matter how long one sits. Sitting from morning to night is not necessarily the best meditation. If you sit for a short period of time, you receive benefit from that sitting, and if you sit for a long period of time, you also benefit.”
Source: Zen: The Authentic Gate
“Beginners who sit on their own should start with periods of five minutes and gradually work up to about twenty-five or thirty minutes for a single sitting.”
Source: Zen: The Authentic Gate
“The ideal number of sitting periods in a day will depend on individual aspiration and circumstances. If we decide that one of our periods of sitting will be thirty minutes, then sitting four periods of zazen in a day would already amount to two hours. At the very least, everyone should be able to make time for one period each day, and most people should be able to sit at least two, for a total of an hour a day. People with high aspirations should be able to sit three or four periods a day, although maintaining such a schedule every day is hardly easy.”
Source: Zen: The Authentic Gate
“Practice as many periods a day as is reasonable given your aspiration and circumstances, and make sure you faithfully stick to your schedule every day. Say you are sitting three periods a day. What is the best time to do so? This will also depend on circumstances. The ideal scenario would be to sit one period after rising and getting dressed, one period during the day, and one period before going to bed. Those who work full time may find it impossible to sit a period of meditation during the day, in which case they could incorporate that time as part of their morning or evening sit. Once again, the important thing is to practice as much as your circumstances allow.”
Source: Zen: The Authentic Gate
“Suppose we have a bucket filled with dirty water and pour a glass of clean water into it. Although we will see no difference when we look at it, the addition of that glass of water has made the water in the bucket that much cleaner. Likewise, when we sit for even a single period of zazen our personality becomes purified in proportion to the length of that sitting. Although we may not be the least aware of it, we can be certain we have moved a step closer to the realization of our essential nature.”
Source: Zen: The Authentic Gate
“In short, zazen is seeing this world from the casket, without me.”
Source: The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo
“Since beginners can only remain in contact with the object of observation for short periods, initially one should meditate in brief sessions even eighteen times a day; in due course stability will be achieved of its own accord, at which time the session can be lengthened. It is important not to try at first to meditate for long periods; otherwise, upon sight of the meditation cushion, one will feel nausea and laziness. The session should be left while it is going well, when one still feels that it would go well if continued.”
Source: Meditation on Emptiness
“Zazen doesn’t give you something—it’s the complete opposite!”
Source: Each Moment Is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time
“Your breath is a unique object to meditation because it resides right at the boundary between inside and outside, between you and the outside world.”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“Spring night in winter. The door open to night air. A family walks by. A child laughs with glee. Night-Sit. I ponder an old phrase of Ikkyu's: The buddhadharma is also the Way of Tea. A bolt of lightning splits my brain open and I pour down into my own heart.”
Source: The School of Soft Attention
“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.”
Source: The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo
“In zazen we practice the oneness of reality.”
Source: Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master