Roshi Quotes & Sayings

A Zen student asked his roshi the most important element of Zen.The roshi replied, "Attention." "Yes, thank you," the student replied. "But can you tell me the second most important element?"And the roshi replied, "Attention." — Dan Millman

It is the rub that polishes the jewel," Enso Roshi says. "Nobody ever gets to nirvana without going through samsara. Nobody ever gets to heaven, without going through hell. The center of all things, the truth, is surrounded by demons. — T. Scott McLeod

Life is like stepping into a boat that is about to sail out to sea and sink. - SHUNRYU SUZUKI ROSHI A — Pema Chodron

Early morning, the orange sun is slowly rising, shining forth in empty luminous clarity. The mind and the sky are one, the sun is rising in the vast space of primordial awareness, and there is just this. Yasutani Roshi once said, speaking of satori, that it was the most precious realization in the world, because all the great philosophers had tried to understand ultimate reality but had failed to do so, yet with satori or awakening all of your deepest questions are finally answered: it's just this. — Ken Wilber

In his talk, Suzuki Roshi says that meditation and the whole process of finding your own true nature is one continuous mistake, and that rather than that being a reason for depression or discouragement, it's actually the motivation. — Pema Chodron

The ultimate purpose of Zen,' I remembered the roshi telling me, 'is not in the going away from the world but in the coming back. Zen is not just a matter of gaining enlightenment; it's a matter of acting in a world of love and compassion. — Pico Iyer

A student, filled with emotion and crying, implored, "Why is there so much suffering?"
Suzuki Roshi replied, "No reason. — Shunryu Suzuki

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there. -Yasutani Roshi, Zen master (1885-1973) — Yasutani Roshi

Maybe it's something which can't be defined," Enso Roshi says. "Maybe it's a question, to be lived. — T. Scott McLeod

If it is going to kill you," Enso Roshi says, "then let it kill you. — T. Scott McLeod

We sit to make life meaningful. The significance of our life is not experienced in striving to create some perfect thing. We must simply start with accepting ourselves. Sitting brings us back to actually who and where we are. This can be very painful. Self-acceptance is the hardest thing to do. If we can't accept ourselves, we are living in ignorance, this darkest night. We may still be awake, but we don't know where we are. We cannot see. The mind has no light. Practice is this candle in our very darkest room. — Kobun Chino Otogawa Roshi

Sweep the garden, any size, said the roshi. Sweeping, sweeping alone as the garden grows large or small. Any song sung working the garden brings up from sand gravel soil through straw bamboo wood and less tangible elements Power song for the hands Healing song for the senses what can and cannot be perceived of the soul. — Olga Broumas

Enlightenment does not mean that your ego is suppressed or denied. It does mean that it is deconstructed, seen through, exposed, and then reeducated and reconstructed. — Jun Po Roshi

The more you sense the rareness and value of your own life, the more you realize that how you use it, how you manifest it, is all your responsibility. We face such a big task, so naturally we sit down for a while. — Kobun Chino Otogawa Roshi

And could you, from a place of love, actually stand up and, use force, to give someone back, the suffering, they were trying to put on you? Would I do it? Maybe it would even be, an act of fierce compassion, as Enso Roshi sometimes talked about, to not take it any more. To not cow down, anymore. To let my father know, the tyrant, the aggressor, that if he hits me, I'm going to hit back, and hard. — T. Scott McLeod

Renunciation Suzuki Roshi said, "Renunciation is not giving up the things of this world, but accepting that they go away." Everything is impermanent; sooner or later everything goes away. Renunciation is a state of nonattachment, acceptance of this going away. Impermanence is, in fact, just another name for perfection. Leaves fall; debris and garbage accumulate; out of the debris come flowers, greenery, things that we think are lovely. Destruction is necessary. A good forest fire is necessary. The way we interfere with forest fires may not be a good thing. Without destruction, there could be no new life; and the wonder of life, the constant change, could not be. We must live and die. And this process is perfection itself. — Charlotte Joko Beck

One day a man of the people said to Zen Master Ikkyu: "Master, will you please write for me some maxims of the highest wisdom?" Ikkyu immediately took his brush and wrote the word "Attention." "Is that all?" asked the man. "Will you not add something more?" Ikkyu then wrote twice running: "Attention. Attention." "Well," remarked the man rather irritably, "I really don't see much depth or subtlety in what you have just written." Then Ikkyu wrote the same word three times running: "Attention. Attention. Attention." Half angered, the man demanded: "What does that word 'Attention' mean anyway?" And Ikkyu answered gently: "Attention means attention."11 — Roshi P. Kapleau

people astray and into potentially horrific acts. Both of these views relate to the world that is delivered to us by our senses. There is a third way that Buddhist practitioners know as "Emptiness." This is the unseen, formless energy that extrudes itself as the myriad forms of the world, creating and then retrieving them back to the source. Suzuki Roshi suggested that we think of it as the white screen in a movie theater, the unseen background against which the shimmering movie of — Peter Coyote

When all the teachers are gone, who will be your teacher?
The student replied: "Everything!
Kobun, paused, then said: "No, you". — Kobun Chino Otogawa Roshi

I stole this from Zen Master Suzuki Roshi: If it's not paradoxical it's not true! — C.B. Murphy

A Zendo is not a peaceful haven
but a furnace room for the combustion
of our egotistical delusions. — Eido Shimano Roshi

Look up at the sky once a day. — Kosho Uchiyama Roshi

Katagiri Roshi says: "Poor artists. They suffer very much. They finish a masterpiece and they are not satisfied. They want to go on and do another." Yes, but it's better to go on and do another if you have the urge than to start drinking and become alcoholic or eat a pound of good fudge and get fat. — Natalie Goldberg

I'm helped by a gentle notion from Buddhist psychology, that there are "near enemies" to every great virtue - reactions that come from a place of care in us, and which feel right and good, but which subtly take us down an ineffectual path. Sorrow is a near enemy to compassion and to love. It is borne of sensitivity and feels like empathy. But it can paralyze and turn us back inside with a sense that we can't possibly make a difference. The wise Buddhist anthropologist and teacher Roshi Joan Halifax calls this a "pathological empathy" of our age. In the face of magnitudes of pain in the world that come to us in pictures immediate and raw, many of us care too much and see no evident place for our care to go. But compassion goes about finding the work that can be done. Love can't help but stay present — Krista Tippett

In the mind of the beginner, all things are possible, But in the mind of the expert, only a few. Zen Master Suzuki-Roshi — Barbara L. Jordan

A famous Japanese Zen master, Hakuun Yasutani Roshi, said that unless you can explain Zen in words that a fisherman will comprehend, you don't know what you're talking about. Some fifty years ago a UCLA professor told me the same thing about applied mathematics. We like to hide from the truth behind foreign-sounding words or mathematical lingo. There's a saying: The truth is always encountered but rarely perceived. If we don't perceive it, we can't help ourselves and we can't much help anyone else. — Jeff Bridges

The entire world is understood as a living interrelated and interactive system. Thus, if a tree outside of the zendo is damaged, I am also damaged. Just so, if I am damaged, so too, the Universe. — Harvey Daiho Hilbert-roshi

At times, Zen does get into some Buddhist Cosmology. Nishijima Roshi, my main teacher would talk about that and almost every time immediately say that it was only one way of looking at it. Whenever addressing realms of Heaven or Hell, he'd also address that it was just a psychological state. — Brad Warner