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Zen Quotes

Browse 1609 quotes about Zen.

Zen Quotes

“Every day, priests minutely examine the Dharma And endlessly chant complicated sutras. Before doing that, though, they should learn How to read the love letters sent by The wind and rain, the snow and moon.”

PoetryEnlightenmentAwakeningZenDharmaSpiritual PoetryBuddhis
Book:Ikkyu and the Crazy Cloud Anthology: A Zen Poet of Medieval Japan (UNESCO Collection of Representative Works. Japanese Series)
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“We can create some information about Buffalo, milk and its nutritional values. We can exchange that information with each other for money, appreciation etc. A monk living alone in jungle doesn't know words such as Buffalo, milk or nutrition. He just wonders, "Green grass enters into this big black thing and a white liquid comes out of it. How!" He can't exchange this wonder with anyone but it transports him to eternity.”

WisdomSpiritualityWonderBuddhismEternityZenNo Thought
Author:Shunya
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“We don't usually see that there's a third possible logical term equal to yes and no, which is capable of explaining our understanding in an unrecognized direction. We don't even have a term for it, so I'll have to use the Japanese "Mu." Mu means no thing, like quality, it points outside the process of dualistic discrimination. Mu simply says, no class, not one, not zero, not yes, not no. It states that the context of the question is such that a yes or no answer is an error and should not be given. Un-ask the question is what it says. Mu becomes appropriate when the context of the question becomes too small for the truth of the answer.”

PhilosophyZenBuddha NatureNo ThingBinary ThinkingMu
Author:Robert Prisig
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“At present we’re snowed under with an irrational expansion of blind data-gathering in the sciences because there’s no rational format for any understanding of scientific creativity. At present we are also snowed under with a lot of stylishness in the arts … thin art … because there’s very little assimilation or extension into underlying form. We have artists with no scientific knowledge and scientists with no artistic knowledge, and both with no spiritual sense of gravity at all. And the result is not just bad, it is ghastly. The time for real reunification of art and technology is really long overdue.”

ArtPhilosophyScienceQualityTechnologyUnityZen
Author:Robert Prisig
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“And now I began to see for the first time the unbelievable magnitude of what man, when man gained power to understand rule the world in terms of dialectic truths, had lost. He had built empires of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature into enormous manifestations of his own dreams of power and wealth - but for this he had exchanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude: an understanding of what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it.”

PhilosophyTruthScienceZenOnenessLost KnowledgeDevil S Bargain
Author:Robert Prisig
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“Within you there is eternal life. This life arise as form and continues, instant by instant, appearing and disappearing. Moreover, this flickering, appearing and disappearing, is not the flickering of a solidified individual self; it is the sparkling appearance and disappearance of a fusion of the self and its surroundings, in union.”

DeathZenEmptiness
Book:Novice to Master: An Ongoing Lesson in the Extent of My Own Stupidity
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“We find Tankawosho breaking up a wooden statue of Buddha on a wintry day to make a fire. 'What sacrilege!' said the horror-stricken bystander. 'I wish to get the Shali out of the ashes,' calmly rejoined the Zen. 'But you certainly will not get Shali from this image!' was the angry retort, to which Tanka replied, 'If I do not, this is certainly not a Buddha and I am committing no sacrilege.' Then he turned to warm himself over the kindling fire.”

ZenBuddhaSacrilegeShali
Book:The Book of Tea
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“We do not "come into" this world, we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves", as the universe "peoples". Every individual is an expression of the realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated "egos" inside bags of skin.”

PhilosophyZen
Author:Alan Watts
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“So, we have a paradox where washing the dishes one time is seemingly unimportant. But washing them 10,000 times (consistently, every day) is important because that repetition ensures that we always have plates and silverware at our disposal. But we can’t wash the dishes 10,000 times unless we start by washing them once. A single action done correctly and repeatedly makes all the difference in our lives.”

ReligionSpiritualityBuddhismMindfulnessZenCleaning
Book:Perfectly Ordinary: Buddhist Teachings for Everyday Life
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