Quotes About Zen

And finally, be assured that Zen asks nothing even as it promises nothing. One can be a Protestant Zen Buddhist, a Catholic Zen Buddhist or a Jewish Zen Buddhist. Zen is a quiet thing. It listens.

In the advanced practice, the relationship between the Zen master and the student becomes very terse. The Zen master will expect things of the student because the student is in graduate school.

The thing about Zen is that it pushes contradictions to their ultimate limit where one has to choose between madness and innocence. And Zen. suggests that we may be driving toward one or the other on a cosmic scale. Driving toward them because, one way or the other, as madmen or innocents, we are already there. It might be good to open our eyes and see.

I'm a poet who practices Zen. And it's not, I'm somebody who practices Zen who writes poetry. There's no separation for me.

The secret of this kind of climbing, is like Zen. Don't think. Just dance along. It's the easiest thing in the world, actually easier than walking on flat ground which is monotonous. The cute little problems present themselves at each step and yet you don't hesitate and you find yourself on some other boulder you picked out for no special reason at all, just like zen.~ Japhy

Zen Makes use, to a great extent, of poetical expressions; Zen is wedded to poetry.

The ultimate purpose of Zen,' I remembered the roshi telling me, 'is not in the going away from the world but in the coming back. Zen is not just a matter of gaining enlightenment; it's a matter of acting in a world of love and compassion.

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.

What is perfect? From the Zen mind, perfection is not being there.

So what I liked about Zen was that it never goes off into the realm of imagination land, or if it does occasionally, the good teachers will openly address it specifically as only imagination. Both of my teachers were very good at that.

To say one is revolutionary is a little like saying one is a Zen Buddhist - if you say you are, you probably aren't.

I have lived with several Zen masters -- all of them cats.

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

Smile, breathe and go slowly." - Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Zen monk, author and peace activist.

On these matters of specific fact, like is the mushroom an extraterrestrial and that sort of thing, I haven't the faintest idea. The mushroom itself is such a mercurial, elusive, Zen sort of personality that I never believe a word it says. I simply entertain its notions and try and sort through them, and I found that to be the most enriching approach to it.

The Japanese have become so smitten with the Western condiment - its texture as silky as a kimono, its tang as understated as the tang of Zen - that today they have a word for mayonnaise junkie: mayora.

Sanity and enlightenment...I've been reading a new book Dogen's Genjo Koan: Three Commentaries, and it contains a commentary on Genjo Koan by Shunryu Suzuki, the author who wrote Zen Mind, Beginners Mind. He doesn't mention sanity at all but I think that one possible definition of enlightenment would be a kind of profound sanity, where being insane is no longer an option.

Zen is to have the heart and soul of a little child.

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.

The Zen people from Ancient China, "When you're walking, just walk." It turns out to be the hardest thing.

In life as well as in art Zen never wastes energy in stopping to explain; it only indicates.

I didn't mean for you to take that the wrong way," He said abruptly. Mae stared at him in amazement. So, for that matter, did Jamie. "What?" "Demons don't touch anyone without a reason," Nick went on, his eyes shut again. "You can imagine what kind of reasons we usually have. I don't like--not anyone--I didn't mean anything by it." "Oh," said Jamie. "Oh, that's okay! That's fine. I understand. I am filled to the brim with understanding and, and acceptance! I'm very Zen like that.

HELLO! Look at me. HELLO! I am so ZEN. This is BLOOD. This is NOTHING. Hello. Everything is nothing, and it's so cool to be ENLIGHTENED. Like me.

There's kind of a Zen aspect to bowling. The pins are either staying up or down before you even throw your arm back. It's kind of a mind-set. You want to be in this perfect mind-set before you released the ball.

Tantric Zen is for the individual who is in love with both the finite and the infinite, who gets a kick out of this weird transitory world and at the same time, wants to step beyond it.

Think of Zen, of the Void, of Good and Evil and you are bound hand and foot. Think only and entirely and completely of what you are doing at the moment and you are free as a bird.

So I'm skeptical and cynical about the whole thing and it's only if something seems to be genuine that I would pursue it. That's why I've stuck with Zen for so long and not gone on to some other path with it.

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."

Zen pretty much comes down to three things -- everything changes; everything is connected; pay attention.

In Zen brush-painting, the circle is a master's problem. It represents everything and nothing, and in so doing, the universe.

I am still raw. I say I may be back. You know what lies are for. Even in your Zen heaven we shan't meet.

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.

Zen lives in the present. The Whole teaching is: how to be in the present; how to get out of the past which is no more and how not to get involved in the future which is not yet, and just to be rooted, centered, in that which is.

That's a waste of time. If you really understand Zen... you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because... the sound of the rain needs no translation.

At my Rolling Stones' tour, the camera was a protection. I used it in a Zen way.

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.

The Zen expression “Kill the Buddha!” means to kill any concept of the Buddha as something apart from oneself.

In Zen Buddhism an action is considered good when it brings happiness and well-being to oneself and others, evil when it brings suffering and harm to oneself and others.

Zen aims at freedom but its practice is disciplined.

As a dialectical teacher, I have had many lives where I have taught Zen and Tibetan Buddhism and mysticism. I teach in many different modalites. But the theme that unites them - is love.

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

The purpose of Zen is the perfection of character.

Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.

I put down my book, The Meaning of Zen, and see the cat smiling into her fur as she delicately combs it with her rough pink tongue. 'Cat, I would lend you this book to study but it appears you have already read it.' She looks up and gives me her full gaze. 'Don't be ridiculous,' she purrs, 'I wrote it.'

Zen is the game of insight, the game of discovering who you are beneath the social masks.

Zen is not morality, it is aesthetics. It does not impose a code of morality. it does not give you any commandments: do this, don't do that.

Zen is Tantric Buddhism, Vajrayana is tantric Buddhism - these are various forms of it. Tantric Buddhism simply means cutting to the chase.