Browse 189 quotes about Zen Buddhism.
“However, for human beings, practice is much too tiresome. We want to show our appreciation like sightseers, without doing it ourselves. Like spectator sports, which are very popular, the Zen fad is really a spectator Zen or Zen sightseeing fad.
Roshi, Kosho Uchiyama. Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo (Kindle Locations 2165-2167). Wisdom Publications. Kindle Edition.”
Source: Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo
“However, for human beings, practice is much too tiresome. We want to show our appreciation like sightseers, without doing it ourselves. Like spectator sports, which are very popular, the Zen fad is really a spectator Zen or Zen sightseeing fad.”
Source: Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo
“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.”
Source: Each Moment Is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time
“Going through all these quotations, it may be thought that the critics are justified in charging Zen with advocating a philosophy of pure negation, but nothing is so far from Zen as this criticism would imply. For Zen always aims at grasping the central fact of life, which can never be brought to the dissecting table of the intellect. To grasp this central fact of life, Zen is forced to propose a series of negations. Mere negation, however, is not the spirit of Zen, but as we are so accustomed to the dualistic way of thinking, this intellectual error must be cut at its root. Naturally Zen would proclaim, "Not this, not that, not anything." But we may insist upon asking Zen what it is that is left after all these denials, and the master will perhaps on such an occasion give us a slap in the face, exclaiming, "You fool, what is this?" Some may take this as only an excuse to get away from the dilemma, or as having no more meaning than a practical example of ill-breeding. But when the spirit of Zen is grasped in its purity, it will be seen what a real thing that slap is. For here is no negation, no affirmation, but a plain fact, a pure experience, the very foundation of our being and thought. All the quietness and emptiness one might desire in the midst of most active mentation lies therein. Do not be carried away by anything outward or conventional. Zen must be seized with bare hands, with no gloves on.”
Source: An Introduction to Zen Buddhism
“Zen is forced to resort to negation because of our innate ignorance (avidya), which tenaciously clings to the mind as wet clothes do to the body. 'Ignorance' is all very well as far as it goes, but it must not go out of its proper sphere. 'Ignorance' is another name for logical dualism. White is snow and black is the raven. But these belong to the world and its ignorant way of talking. If we want to get to the very truth of things, we must see them from the point where this world has not yet been created, where the consciousness of this and that has not yet been awakened and where the mind is absorbed in its own identity, that is, in its serenity and emptiness. This is a world of negations but leading to a higher and absolute affirmation--an affirmation in the midst of negations. Snow is not white, the raven is not black, yet each in itself is white or black. This is where our everyday language fails to convey the exact meaning as conceived by Zen.”
Source: An Introduction to Zen Buddhism
“I haven't learned how to confront a problem by avoiding it.”
“When we fancy ourselves to be a particular thing with a name, we see ourselves as we would a cork in a stream. What we do not realize is that there is only stream. What we fancy as particular is, from the first, only movement, change and flow.”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“Life's Journeys
Inward seeking moves towards being-time
Outward seeking journies among life's ornaments”
“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.”
Source: Zen and the Birds of Appetite
“How much does he lack himself who must have many things?”
“When we attach to a problem, we make the problem worse. When we attach to a solution, we make the problem worse.”
Source: Nothing Extra: Notes On the Zen Life
“Careful!
Even moonlit dewdrops,
If you’re lured to watch,
Are a wall before the Truth.
— Sogyo”
“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.”
Source: Kill Your Self: Life After Ego
“Render unto meditation the things that are meditation’s, and unto medication the things that are medication’s.”
Source: Kill Your Self: Life After Ego
“On my journey from the fantastical to the practical, spirituality has gone from being a mystical experience to something very ordinary and a daily experience. Many don’t want this, instead they prefer spiritual grandeur, and I believe that is what keeps enlightenment at bay. We want big revelations of complexity that validates our perceptions of the divine. What a let down it was to Moses when God spoke through a burning bush! But that is exactly the simplicity of it all. Our spiritual life is our ordinary life and it is very grounded in every day experience. For me, it is the daily practice of kindness, mindfulness, happiness, and peace.”
“You don´t have to let it linger
Within the palm of your hand,
The tip's already in your finger:
All beginning comes to an end.”
Source: A-Z of Happiness: Tips for Living and Breaking Through the Chain that Separates You from Getting That Dream Job
“[A] book is not merely a book, it is the sun as well.”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“[W]e have endless opportunities to forget the self – in planting a tree for future generations; in creating a poem, a meal, a vessel of clay;”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“If your idea of good opposes something else, you can be sure that [it] is not absolute or certain.”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“The only way we can be free in each moment is to become what each moment is.”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“There's nothing you can find - … nothing you can even imagine – that doesn't originate, develop, or exist in relation to other things.”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“We imagine that things come into existence, endure for a while, and then pass out of existence”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“To forget the self is to remember that we don't exist alone, but in relation to other people, to other creatures, to the planet, and to the universe.”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“[F]ocus not on ourselves as a force in charge of the manipulation of others, but on how our lives interpenetrate those of others – and … all creatures of a dynamic universe.”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“[H]ow can something cease to exist that has no solid existence in the first place?”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“How can a hard and fast view of a world that is never hard and fast possibly be accurate?”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“There's no rule in the end, but only the situation and the inclination of your mind”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“Truth is not … something to believe or disbelieve. The things we believe are always less than Truth[.]”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“[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.”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“[I]mpermanence [is] the very thing that makes [life] vibrant, wonderful, and alive.”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“[T]here is really nothing 'out there' to get because, already, within this moment, everything is whole and complete.”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“We can only be here. We can't leave. We are always here.”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“Good and bad aren't absolutes. They are beliefs, judgements, ideas based on limited knowledge as well as on the inclinations of our minds.”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“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.”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“Belief is at best an educated, informed conjecture about Reality.”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“Belief may serve as a useful stopgap measure in the absence of actual experience, but once you see … [it] becomes unnecessary.”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“We have all sorts of stories about heaven and hell, about oblivion and nothingness, about 'coming back,' and so on. But they are all stories.”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“[E]ven in getting the wonderful things we long for, we tend to live in want of something more[.]”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“Good times come and go. And bad times do the same.”
Source: Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day
“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”
Source: Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction
“It is both dangerous and absurd for our world to be a group of communions mutually excommunicate.”
“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.”
“Anywhere we go, we will have our self with us; we cannot escape ourselves.”
“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.”
Source: Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer's Quest to Find Zen on the Sea
“When you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely, a trace of yourself will be left in what you do.”
Source: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice
“Indicating his twisted legs without a trace of self-pity or bitterness, as if they belonged to all of us, he casts his arms wide to the sky and the snow mountains, the high sun and dancing sheep, and cries, ’Of course I am happy here! It’s wonderful! Especially when I have no choice!’ In its wholehearted acceptance of what is;I feel as if he had struck me in the chest. Butter tea and wind pictures, the Crystal Mountain, and blue sheep dancing on the snow-it’s quite enough!
Have you seen the snow leopard?
No! Isn’t that wonderful?”
Source: The Snow Leopard
“The essence of your mind is not born, so it will never die. It is not an existence, which is perishable. It is not an emptiness, which is a mere void. It has neither colour nor form. It enjoys no pleasures and suffers no pains.
I know you are very ill. Like a good Zen student, you are facing that sickness squarely. You may not know exactly who is suffering, but question yourself: What is the essence of this mind? Think only of this. You will need no more. Covet nothing. Your end which is endless is as a snowflake dissolving in pure air.”
“Life gives you exactly what you need to awaken.”
“You will bring yourself the suffering you need to bring yourself so that you may awaken.”
Source: All That Is Unspoken
“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.”
Source: All That Is Unspoken