Quotes About Zen

Tantric Zen is for someone who is really broad-minded. It is Bodhidharma's Zen, your Zen, my Zen. Which doesn't mean I have a problem with Japanese Zen. Most Japanese Zen is minding your p's and q's.

So the most difficult thing is always to keep your beginner's mind. There is no need to have a deep understanding of Zen. Even though you read much Zen literature, you must read each sentence with a fresh mind. You should not say, "I know what Zen is," or "I have attained enlightenment." This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner. Be very very careful about this point. If you start to practice zazen, you will begin to appreciate your beginner's mind. It is the secret of Zen practice.

Zen abhors repetition or imitation of any kind, for it kills. For the same reason Zen never explains, but only affirms. Life is fact and no explanation is necessary or pertinent. To explain is to apologize, and why should we apologize for living? To live—is that not enough? Let us then live, let us affirm! Herein lies Zen in all its purity and in all its nudity as well.

A well known Los Angeles newspaper referred to a small group of gentlemen who live up on a mountain and practice Zen as 'the Zen cult'. The cult phenomenon is definitely journalistically 'in'.

To have Zen is to be in a state of pure sensation. It is to be freed from the grip of concepts, to see through them. This is not the same as rejecting conceptual thinking. Thoughts and words are in the world and are as natural as flowers. It is a mistake therefore to think that Zen is anti-intellectual.

Always now - just now - come into being. Always now - just now - give yourself to death. Practicing this is Zen practice.

I recommend, for many people, the study of computer science. Our natural resource in America is the mind. The mindset in computer science is very similar to the mindset in Zen.

If Zen has any preference it is for glass that is plain, has no color, and is "just glass."

A simple fishing boat in the midst of the rippling waters is enough to awaken in the mind of the beholder a sense of vastness of the sea and at the same time of peace and contentment - the Zen sense oof the alone.

Until we recognize the SELF that exists apart from who we think we are - we cannot know the Ch'an ( ZEN ) MIND

It's a horrible and wonderful battle with yourself, to stay calm, stay in the moment. My coach said, "Stay here, not at the target. Don't be down there." It's why they call it the Zen art.

I don't lack confidence. I don't sweat. I don't want to get too Zen on you, but I have to run my own race.

I consider writing a legitimate Zen practice.

Zen is not some fancy, special art of living. Our teaching is just to live, always in reality, in its exact sense. To make our effort, moment after moment, is our way.

Let me give you a wonderful Zen practice. Wake up in the morning...look in the mirror, and laugh at yourself.

I steeled myself for the next response. I knew it was going to be one of the Zen life lessons. [...] Instead he kissed me.

The real Zen of the old Chinese masters was wu-shih, or "no fuss."

I could say I believe in every drop of rain that . . . Well, I believe life is a Zen koan, that is, an unsolvable riddle. But the contemplation of that riddle--even though it cannot be solved--is, in itself, transformative. And if the contemplation is of high enough quality, you can merge with the divine.

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.

I feel much more comfortable either up in a tree, or underwater. That's where I feel the most zen.

Zen has no theory. It is a non-theoretical approach into reality. It has no doctrine and no dogma - hence it has no church, no priest, no pope.

Tantric Zen leads to illumination and fun right here and now, which is why I like it.

To Zen, time and eternity are one.

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

From my own personal encounters and studies with both Tantric and Zen Buddhist monks, I have found them to be humorous, warm, charming, and compassionate.

Essentially Satori is a sudden experience, and it is often described as a "turning over" of the mind, just as a pair of scales will suddenly turn over when a sufficient amount of material has been poured into one pan to overbalance the weight in the other. Hence it is an experience which generally occurs after a long and concentrated effort to discover the meaning of Zen.

Like the moon on the water, in a way. When you confront a Zen master, what you're really seeing are not his limitations but yours.

Fish sense, applied in the field, is what the old Zen masters would call enlightenment: simply the ability to see what's right there in front of you without having to sift through a lot of thoughts and theories and, yes, expensive fishing tackle.

The whole essence of Zen consists in walking along the razor's edge of Now - to be so utterly, so completely present that no problem, no suffering, nothing that is not who you are in your essence, can survive in you. In the Now, in the absence of time, all your problems dissolve. Suffering needs time; it cannot survive in the Now.

I have a deep-seated distrust and even contempt for people who are driven by ambition to conquer the world … those who cannot control themselves and produce vast amounts of crap that no one cares about. I find it unattractive. I like the Zen artists: they’d do some work, and then they’d stop for a while.

I live part-time in a cabin in Colorado up in the mountains and part-time on a ranch in central Texas - but do I really know how to go brand a cow, or do I really know how to go rappelling down a cliff? No. I do the recreational, half-assed version of all these manly activities and then try to keep that kind of Zen masculinity, like, "I'm a man of nature."

What interests me is to paint the kind of antisensitivity that impregnates modern civilization. I think art since Cezanne has become extremely romantic and unrealistic, feeding on art. It is Utopian. It has less and less to do with the world. It looks inward - neo-Zen and all that. Pop Art looks out into the world. It doesn't look like a painting of something, it looks like the thing itself.

Zen is a totally different kind of religion. It brings humanness to religion. It is not bothered about anything superhuman; its whole concern is how to make ordinary life a blessing.

Others have falsely claimed to be the inspiration for Tom Booker in The Horse Whisperer. The one who truly inspired me was Buck Brannaman. His skill, understanding and his gentle, loving heart have parted the clouds for countless troubled creatures. Buck is the Zen master of the horse world.

What writing practice, like Zen practice does is bring you back to the natural state of mind...The mind is raw, full of energy, alive and hungry. It does not think in the way we were brought up to think-well-mann ered, congenial.

Zen Buddhism is a discipline where belief isn't necessary.

I was talking to a Zen master the other day and he said, "You shall be my disciple."I looked at him and said, "Who was Buddha's teacher?" He looked at me in a very odd way for a moment and then he burst into laughter and handed me a piece of clover.

Here it is. My moment of zen.

I may discuss contemporary cinema, how to shop at a mall without losing energy, how to use the power of mind to increase career and academic success, the Zen of sports, reincarnation, karma, sex, the experience of "suchness" or a new book by Stephen King.

Zen practice asks you not to worry about who you 'should' become. Find out who you are right now.

But the solution to the riddle of life and space and time lies outside space and time. For, as it should be abundantly clear by now, nothing inside a frame can state, or even ask, anything about that frame. The solution, then, is not the finding of an answer to the riddle of existence, but the realization that there is no riddle. This is the essence of the beautiful, almost Zen Buddhist closing sentences of the Tracticus: "For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist."

I think that that's why artists make art - it is difficult to put into words unless you are a poet. What it takes is being open to the flow of universal creativity. The Zen artists knew this.

In the Zen Way we focus upon each breath, each day, each moment and experience it totally. One complete breath brings the next.

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion or cultural system. I am not from the East or the West, not out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all. I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next, did not descend from Adam or Eve or any origin story. My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul. I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being.

Zen Hugs - the hugs that you would get, if we were there, if we could hug you, but we aren't, and we can't.

Zen teaches nothing; it merely enables us to wake up and become aware. It does not teach, it points.