Zen Quotes

[I]t is typical of Zen that its style of action has the strongest feeling of commitment, of follow-through. It enters into everything wholeheartedly and freely without having to keep an eye on itself. It does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

~ Alan W. Watts

I hope that I am making myself understood. The Golden Temple once more appeared before me. Or rather, I should say that the breast was transformed into the Golden Temple.

~ Yukio Mishima

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

~ Alan W. Watts

Zen is nothing to get excited about.

~ Shunryu Suzuki

One master defines Zen as the art of feeling the polar star in the southern sky. Truth can be reached only through the comprehension of opposites.

~ Kakuzō Okakura

There is nowhere to arrive except the present moment.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

To think, or not to think...This is the true question.

~ Bert Mccoy

I am not important. If I take a break, no one dies. And this is A Good Thing.

~ Helen Russell

Mountains like these and travelers in the mountains and events that happen to them here are found not only in Zen literature but in the tales of every major religion. This allegory of a physical mountain for the spiritual one that stands between each soul and its goal is an easy and natural one to make. Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships. Some travel into the mountains accompanied by experienced guides who know the best and least dangerous routes by which they arrive at their destination. Still others, inexperienced and untrusting, attempt to make their own routes. Few of these are successful, but occasionally some, by sheer will and luck and grace, do make it. Once there they become more aware than any of the others that there's no single or fixed number of routes. There are as many routes as there are individual souls.

~ Robert M. Pirsig

Po: Maybe I should just quit and go back to making noodles.Oogway: Quit, don't quit? Noodles, don't noodles? You are too concerned about what was and what will be. There is a saying: yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.

~ Kung Fu Panda

Stay in the center, and you will be ready to move in any direction.

~ Alan W. Watts

The mind's best trick is the illusion that it exists.

~ Marty Rubin

Don’t read books!Don’t chant poems!When you read books your eyeballs wither awayleaving the bare sockets.When you chant poems your heart leaks out slowlywith each word.People say reading books is enjoyable.People say chanting poems is fun.But if your lips constantly make a soundlike an insect chirping in autumn,you will only turn into a haggard old man.And even if you don’t turn into a haggard old man,it’s annoying for others to have to hear you.It’s so much betterto close your eyes, sit in your study,lower the curtains, sweep the floor,burn incense.It’s beautiful to listen to the wind,listen to the rain,take a walk when you feel energetic,and when you’re tired go to sleep.

~ Yang Wanli

During this journey it was as if he again thought over his whole life and reached the same old comforting and hopeless conclusion: that there was no need for him to start anything, that he had to live out his life without doing evil, without anxiety, and without wishing for anything.

~ Leo Tolstoy

To practice with an end in view is to have one eye on the practice and the other on the end, which is lack of concentration, lack of sincerity.

~ Alan W. Watts

The brush must draw by itself. This cannot happen if one does not practice constantly. But neither can it happen if one makes an effort.

~ Alan W. Watts

Today most scientists would agree with the ancient Hindus that nothing exists or is destroyed, things merely change shape or form…the cosmic radiation that is thought to come from the explosion of creation strikes the earth with equal intensity from all directions, which suggests either that the earth is at the center of the universe, as in our innocence we once supposed, or that the known universe has no center.

~ Peter Matthiessen

...it should be remembered that men always prize that most which is least enjoyed.

~ James Fenimore Cooper

If you are surrounded by people who not only don't believe in your goals and your positive outlook on life, but who also continually try to tear you down, it will be extremely challenging for you to hold firmly in mind that you will succeed and that you can be happy.

~ Chris Prentiss

What determines each person's state of happiness or unhappiness is not the event itself, but what the event means to that person.

~ Chris Prentiss

If the feet of enlightenment moved, the great ocean would overflow; If that head bowed, it would look down upon the heavens.Such a body has no place to rest. . . .Let another continue this poem.

~ Paul Reps

The true source of happiness is within each of us.

~ Chris Prentiss

Every belief that you hold manifests itself in some manner by either causing you to take some form of action or by preventing you from taking action. If you don't believe something is possible, you won't even attempt it.

~ Chris Prentiss

Stress comes from the way you relate to events or situations.

~ Chris Prentiss

Your actions create an energy vortex that draws in the necessary ingredients for your venture.

~ Chris Prentiss

A strong personal philosophy does more than sustain us through the tragedies of life. It also stains us daily in everything we think and do. It gives us optimism and hope.

~ Chris Prentiss

The most dangerous thing about an academic education is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract thinking instead of simply paying attention to what’s going on in front of me.

~ David Foster Wallace

We will be entering the beautiful world of a Zen master's no-mind. Sosan is the third Zen Patriarch. Nothing much is known about him- this is as it should be, because history records only violence. History does not record silence- it cannot record it. All records are of disturbance. Whenever someone becomes really silent, he disappears from all records, he is no more a part of our madness. So it is as it should be.Ch. 1: The Great Way Is Not Difficult

~ Osho

May we exist like a lotus, / At home in the muddy water. / Thus we bow to life as it is.

~ Zen

What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?

~ Henry David Thoreau

The object of our lives is to look at, listen to, touch, taste things. Without them—these sticks, stones, feathers, shells—there is no Deity.

~ R.h. Blyth

For some reason when I type the word love in my iPad it keeps autocorrecting to live. I find it oddly profound. My ipad IS. My iPad is ZEN: “Only the iPad that autocorrects can write the true thing.

~ Annastacia Dickerson

For us life is a fact, no less, and, above all, no more.

~ Julien Torma

The present is always the best, even when its rough.

~ Julien Torma

To enter the Buddha Way is to stop discriminating between good and evil and to cast aside the mind that says this is good and that is bad.

~ Dōgen

See for yourself whether letting go when a part of you really wants to hold on doesn't bring a deeper satisfaction than clinging.

~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

Every man possesses the Buddha-nature. Do not demean yourselves.

~ Dōgen

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

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.”-“When you are sitting in the middle of your own problem, which is more real to you: your problem or you yourself? The awareness that you are here, right now, is the ultimate fact. ”-“Knowing that your life is short, to enjoy it day after day, moment after moment, is the life of “form is form and emptiness is emptiness.”-“You may feel as if you are doing something special, but actually it is only the expression of your true nature; it is the activity which appeases your inmost desire. But as long as you think you are practicing zazen for the sake of something, that is not true practice.”-“The most important thing is to forget all gaining ideas, all dualistic ideas. In other words, just practice zazen in a certain posture.

~ Shunryu Suzuki

No bow can be strung indefinitely, for it will surely break

~ Nicholas C. Rossis