Best Zen Buddhism Quotes & Sayings

Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Tantric Zen is a state of mind — Frederick Lenz

Essays in Zen Buddhism — Alan W. Watts

itt was snowing as if you could hear wolves howling — Dick Allen

A well known Los Angeles newspaper referred to a small group of gentlemen who live up on a mountain and practice Zen as 'the Zen cult'. The cult phenomenon is definitely journalistically 'in'. — Frederick Lenz

What makes human life
which is inseparable from this moment
so precious is its fleeting nature. And not that it doesn't last but that it never returns again. — Steve Hagen

[A] book is not merely a book, it is the sun as well. — Steve Hagen

It is necessary to have a very liberal and simultaneously very conservative mentality to practice Tantric Zen. — Frederick Lenz

[I]t is rather the past and the future which are the fleeting illusions, and the present which is eternally real. We discover that the linear succession of time is a convention of our single-track verbal thinking, of a consciousness which interprets the world by grasping little pieces of it, calling them things and events. But every such grasp of the mind excludes the rest of the world, so that this type of consciousness can get an approximate vision of the whole only through a series of grasps, one after the other. — Alan W. Watts

Once upon a time,
there was a Zen sign
at every small railway crossing in America

Stop. Look. And listen. — Dick Allen

Consider this:
1. Would you ride in a car whose driver was on the consciousness-expanding "entheogenic" drug LSD?
And here's a bonus question:
2. Why does an "expanded consciousness" include the inability to operate a motor vehicle? — Brad Warner

The practice of concentration is like acquiring a lampshade to help us concentrate our mind on something. While doing sitting or walking meditation, cutting the future, cutting the past, dwelling in the present time, we develop our own power of concentration. With that power of concentration, we can look deeply into the problem. This is insight meditation.
First we are aware of the problem, focusing all our attention on the problem, and then we look deeply into it in order to understand its real nature [ ... ]. — Thich Nhat Hanh

If you have the sense of participation in sports or athletics, of being a player, then you are not really into the Zen mind. In Zen mind there is no sense of self in the play. — Frederick Lenz

[F]or Zen there is no duality, no conflict between the natural element of chance and the human element of control. The constructive powers of the human mind are no more artificial than the formative actions of plants or bees, so that from the standpoint of Zen it is no contradiction to say that artistic technique is discipline in spontaneity and spontaneity in discipline. — Alan W. Watts

I teach Zen, tantric mysticism, jnana yoga, bhakti yoga, Tibetan mysticism, occultism and psychic development. I also teach poetry and literature, film and many other different things. — Frederick Lenz

Always stay in your own movie. — Ken Kesey

Question everything, even the question mark, that shepherd's crook floating in the air above that small round rock

If you - stubbornly - still wish to be unhappy,
maybe you can grasp it. — Dick Allen

In zazen, leave your front door and your back door open. Let thoughts come and go. Just don't serve them tea. — Shunryu Suzuki

The Buddha is found in other people - even the ones we do not like very much. — Francis Harold Cook

being attached to any one philosophy or religion
dwelling on moot differences and wanting to fit in
despite the path all are led Home in time
following an alternative pathway is certainly no crime
Krishna, Buddha, Allah or Zohar Kabbalah
devoted nonviolently, one is led to Nirvana
Hindu Sages, Zen Masters or Christian Mystics
many tongues, but identical truth spoken from their lips
mentioning Self or no-self or God is Father or Mother
according to their culture emphasizing one method or another
allness vs. nothingness, meditation vs. prayer
devotion in practice is all you should care
when Truth reveals itself you're beyond all conception
then not a single man-made word will hold any traction — Jarett Sabirsh

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

A koan is like a riddle that's supposed to help you toward enlightenment in Zen Buddhism. For my answer, I wrote about this guy Banzan. He was walking through the market on day when he overheard someone ask a butcher for his best piece of meat. The butcher answered, "Everything in my shop is the best. You cannot find a piece of meat that is not the best." Upon hearing this, Banzan realized that there is no best and no worst, that those judgments have no real meaning because there is only was is, and poof, he reached enlightenment. — John Green

In the zazen posture, your mind and body have, great power to accept things as they are, whether agreeable or disagreeable.
In our scriptures (Samyuktagama Sutra, volume 33), it is said that there are four kinds of horses: excellent ones, good ones, poor ones, and bad ones. The best horse will run slow and fast, right and left, at the driver's will, before it sees the shadow of the whip; the second best will run as well as the first one does, just before the whip reaches its skin; the third one will run when it feels pain on its body; the fourth will run after the pain penetrates to the marrow of its bones. You can imagine how difficult it is for the fourth one to learn how to run! — Shunryu Suzuki

Suzuki's works on Zen Buddhism are among the best contributions to the knowledge of living Buddhism ... We cannot be sufficiently grateful to the author, first for the fact of his having brought Zen closer to Western understanding, and secondly for the manner in which he has achieved this task. — D.T. Suzuki

Indicating his twisted legs without a trace of self-pity or bitterness, as if they belonged to all of us, he casts his arms wide to the sky and the snow mountains, the high sun and dancing sheep, and cries, 'Of course I am happy here! It's wonderful! Especially when I have no choice!' In its wholehearted acceptance of what is;I feel as if he had struck me in the chest. Butter tea and wind pictures, the Crystal Mountain, and blue sheep dancing on the snow-it's quite enough!
Have you seen the snow leopard?
No! Isn't that wonderful? — Peter Matthiessen

The mind is limitless, in its creations. — T. Scott McLeod

Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You've got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it. — Ray Bradbury

In Zen Buddhism it is said that "if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him". Which means that if by walking on the spiritual path you encounter the rigid ideas and fixed laws of institutionalised Buddhism , you must free yourself from them too. — Yuval Noah Harari

The way is not clear, and it is when you do not have clarity, when this is allowed, that you will finally have clarity. — T. Scott McLeod

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

How much does he lack himself who must have many things? — Sen No Rikyu

As we live out of such a mind, we become generous, with no sense of tolerance. We become patient, with no sense of putting up with anything. We become compassionate, with no sense of separation. And we become wise, with no sense of having to straighten anyone out. — Steve Hagen

In the Zen of sports and athletics, we seek to bring discipline and control into our physical movements, but at the same time to eliminate the self that gets in the way of perfect play. — Frederick Lenz

[H]uman experience is determined as much by the nature of the mind and the structure of its senses as by the external objects whose presence the mind reveals. — Alan W. Watts

Can you allow yourself to be impaled on the present moment? — T. Scott McLeod

We die, he said.
We die, I said. And kn owing this how do we live?
Knowing this, we live.
We live. — Alan Spence

I don't know where I'm going on this path. I don't know what I'm doing with my life. You had to be lost, before you could be found. These are the truths. You had to be confused, before you could find clarity; you had to suffer, before you could find peace. These were the only ways, life could happen. Of course you were confused before you found clarity. If you weren't confused, then you would already be clear. Of course you were lost before you were found. If you were already found, then you wouldn't be lost. Of course there would be suffering before peace. If there was already peace, then there wouldn't be suffering. One necessarily came before the other. — T. Scott McLeod

Zen Buddhism is a discipline where belief isn't necessary. — David Sylvian