Zen Buddhism Quotes

The only way we can be free in each moment is to become what each moment is.

~ Steve Hagen

How can a hard and fast view of a world that is never hard and fast possibly be accurate?

~ Steve Hagen

Truth is not … something to believe or disbelieve. The things we believe are always less than Truth[.]

~ Steve Hagen

[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.

~ Steve Hagen

We can only be here. We can't leave. We are always here.

~ Steve Hagen

If your idea of good opposes something else, you can be sure that [it] is not absolute or certain.

~ Steve Hagen

Belief is at best an educated, informed conjecture about Reality.

~ Steve Hagen

Good and bad aren't absolutes. They are beliefs, judgements, ideas based on limited knowledge as well as on the inclinations of our minds.

~ Steve Hagen

Good times come and go. And bad times do the same.

~ Steve Hagen

[E]ven in getting the wonderful things we long for, we tend to live in want of something more[.]

~ Steve Hagen

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.

~ Steve Hagen

Belief may serve as a useful stopgap measure in the absence of actual experience, but once you see … [it] becomes unnecessary.

~ Steve Hagen

There's nothing you can find - … nothing you can even imagine – that doesn't originate, develop, or exist in relation to other things.

~ Steve Hagen

We imagine that things come into existence, endure for a while, and then pass out of existence

~ Steve Hagen

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.

~ Steve Hagen

[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.

~ Steve Hagen

It is both dangerous and absurd for our world to be a group of communions mutually excommunicate.

~ Alan W. Watts

With passions stilled and one's nature firm, all destinies are in harmony; When the full moon of contemplation is reached you will be pure.

~ Wu Cheng'en

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.

~ Bassui Takusho

At the moment of giving birth to a child, is the mother separate from the child? You should study not only that you become a mother when your child is born, but also that you become a child.

~ Dogen Zenji

People get stuck a lot because they're afraid to act; in the worst case,...we get so attached to some end result that we can't function. We need help just to move on, only life doesn't wait.

~ Bernie Glassman