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.

Zen enriches no one. There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while in the place where it is thought to be. But they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the "nothing," the "no-body" that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen. It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it, because it was not their kind of prey.

Zen is poetry; poetry is Zen.

The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

I raise my hand; I take a book from the other side of this desk; I hear the boys playing ball outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the neighboring woods:-in all these I am practicing Zen, I am living Zen. No worldly discussion is necessary, or any explanation.

There is competition in Zen. Let's not be ridiculous. There is competition in everything in life; being a winner in Zen means, competing and winning in the world of enlightenment.

The way of Zen is to become independent and strong. Don't rely on others for perceptions of life and truth. Do it individually. Go to a teacher of Zen to learn how to do that, not to get answers for individual life situations.

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

In Old Zen, the Zen Master would do literally anything to break down the concept of what the study was. He would present conflicting codes all the time, just to shake this fixation people had on how to attain liberation.

Someone once inquired of a Far Eastern Zen master, who had a great serenity and peace about him no matter what pressures he faced, "How do you maintain that serenity and peace?" He replied, "I never leave my place of meditation." He meditated early in the morning and for the rest of the day, he carried the peace of those moments with him in his mind and heart.

Tantric Zen is more suited for this age that we live in. It give you rules, but in a gentle way. It's not as demanding.

You know I've been in these tabloids for years now. And at some point you just become a Zen master of it all. Most of these stories, you get probably 2 percent real fruit juice and the rest is just garbage with no nutritional value.

Fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

All the time. A few months ago I came really close to losing it, I was getting really paranoid. And then I started a new job, things fixed themselves. I can't turn my back on the situation and ignore it. If tomorrow I say: "Okay, I've had enough, we're stopping everything" it won't change anything. Might as well try to accept it and stay zen as I have no control over it.

Years of expensive Zen training gone to waste

Zen teaches that our approach to today determines our whole approach to life.

In the assemblies of the enlightened ones there have been many cases of mastering the Way bringing forth the heart of plants and trees; this is what awakening the mind for enlightenment is like. The fifth patriarch of Zen was once a pine-planting wayfarer; Rinzai worked on planting cedars and pines on Mount Obaku. . . . Working with plants, trees, fences and walls, if they practice sincerely they will attain enlightenment.

I began researching and writing what I intended as a book-length essay entitled Fascination and Liberation, exploring the question of whether there is a conflict between creativity and the Eastern form of enlightenment. I don't know if I'll ever finish that essay, because I had an experience, after I'd written two or three chapters, in which it seemed to me that my psychic antibodies decisively rejected Buddhism. Interestingly, the rejection felt as if it happened in Zen terms.

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.

The practice of Zen is forgetting the self in the act of uniting with something.

I can pinpoint the moment when my first band recorded, when I was 14 and 15 years old. I always enjoyed writing songs and playing, but there was something about going in and capturing it that felt very Zen and perfect for me. A light switch went on and I just realized that's where my musical capacity was the most suited. I just followed on blind faith that that was like a calling for me.

It's a relationship like to a crusty Zen master, or something like that. And it is really like another entity because you cannot predict the answers.

Zen says: be empty. Look without any idea. Look into the nature of things but with no idea, with no prejudice, with no presupposition.

The central benefit of Zen, in the context of ordinary ups and downs of life,is not in preventing the minus and promoting the plus,but in directing people to the fundamental reality that is not under the sway of ups and downs.

The Zen meditative approach has a simple, unstated premise: moods and attitudes shape—determine—what we think and perceive. If we feel happy, we tend to develop certain trains of thought. If we feel sad or angry, still others. But suppose, with training, we become nonattached to distractions and learn to dampen these wild, emotional swings on either side of equanimity. Then we can enter that serene awareness which is the natural soil for positive, spontaneous personal growth, often called spiritual growth.

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.

Zen has no secrets other than seriously thinking about life and death.

Zen is like soap. First you wash with it, and then you wash off the soap.

Everyone needs a spiritual guide: a minister, rabbi, counselor, wise friend, or therapist. My own wise friend is my dog. He has deep knowledge to impart. He makes friends easily and doesn't hold a grudge. He enjoys simple pleasures and takes each day as it comes. Like a true Zen master he eats when he is hungry and sleeps when he is tired. He's not hung up about sex. Best of all, he befriends me with an unconditional love that human beings would do well to imitate.

In Zen we do everything perfectly. We feel that our outer actions are a reflection of our inner state. We call it mindfulness.

You grow, learn, and the more I can sit in silence and be comfortable with myself, the more I can make noise, as ironic and Zen Buddhist and satanic as it sounds!

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.

In Tantric Zen, career, relationships, the type of insurance you have - all things are part of your evolution, your awareness, your experience of the suchness of existence.

In fact, in many ways my mother was quite hippy-dippy, serving macrobiotic food and reading 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.'

Tantric Zen is a state of mind

In Zen Buddhism, "The Great Cessation" is a term that points to the abandoning of the effort to define one's self by any outer definition and to give up acts of futility. It is to let the world remain a mystery that cannot be captured by science, language, or any invention of the mind.

You can do anything you like - really - but this Sci-Fi is absolutely disciplined, it's Zen, you have to be absolutely focused in an area. You have to zone into an area and you then you can achieve when you get there. It's really weird!

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.

Hidden in all good fortune is misfortune. And in all misfortune is good fortune. It's never going to stay the same as long you are in the world or unless you die while you are alive and become an enlightened Zen Master. But those people don't exist. When you study their lives, you find that they had the same struggles as the rest of us. It's not so much about being able to always have calm. Calmness isn't just the absence of noise or troubles. It's being able to find calm within yourself when other stuff is going on.

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

Your immediate experience is Tantric Zen. How aware are you of your immediate experience? - Probably not that aware.

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.

In a few Zen monasteries, every monk has to start his morning with laughter, and has to end his night with laughter - the first thing and the last thing! You try it. . . For no reason! Because there is no reason. Simply, you are again there, still alive - it is a miracle!

Zen is influenced by Daoism, which is not so much a nature-religion in the animistic sense as a nature-philosophy in a cosmic sense.

There's a place where everything comes together and where it's all the same. That state of mind, in which all things are the same, is the state of mind of Tantric Zen.

The secret of Soto Zen is just two words: not always so.... In Japanese, it's two words, three words in English. That is the secret of our practice.

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.