Masao Abe Quotes & Sayings

Zen is a double-edged sword, killing words and thoughts, yet at the same time, giving them life. Although beyond human intellect and philosophy, Zen is their root and source. — Masao Abe

When Death puts out our Flame, the Snuff will tell, If we were Wax, or Tallow by the smell. — Masao Abe

In Buddhism, compassion always goes with wisdom. Compassion without wisdom is not understood to be true compassion, and wisdom without compassion is not true wisdom. — Masao Abe

To think that practice and realization are not one is a heretical view. In the Buddha Dharma, practice and realization are identical. Because one's present practice is practice in realization, one's initial negotiating of the Way in itself is the whole of original realization. Thus, even while directed to practice, one is told not to anticipate a realization apart from practice, because practice points directly to original realization. — Masao Abe

When one existentially awakens from within, the relation of birth-and-death is not seen as a sequential change from the former to the latter. Rather, living as it is, is no more than dying, and at the same time there is no living separate from dying. This means that life itself is death and death itself is life. That is, we do not shift sequentially from birth to death, but undergo living-dying in each and every moment. — Masao Abe

Emptiness is not a mere emptiness, but rather fullness in which the distinctiveness of everything is throughly realized. — Masao Abe

Buddhist nirvana ... is based on egolessness and is not anthropocentric but rather cosmological. In Buddhism, humans and the things of the universe are equally subject to change, equally subject to transitoriness or transmigration. A person cannot achieve emancipation from the cycle of birth and death until he or she can eliminate a more universal problem: the transience common to all things in the universe. — Masao Abe

Science without religion is dangerous because it necessarily entails a mechanization of humanity and consequent loss of individual autonomy and spirituality. On the other hand, religion without science is powerless because it lacks an effective means through which to actualize the ultimate reality. Science and religion must work together harmoniously. — Masao Abe