Quotes & Sayings About Zen Buddhism

Do not lose yourself in the past. Do not lose yourself in the future. Do not get caught in your anger, worries, or fears. Come back to the present moment, and touch life deeply. This is mindfulness. — Thich Nhat Hanh

When life is empty, with respect to the past, and aimless, with respect to the future, the vacuum is filled by the present - normally reduced to a hairline, a split second in which there is no time for anything to happen. — Alan W. Watts

Most people put the cart before the horse, which is an interesting way to go through life. They approach everything directly. In Zen we approach everything backwards or inside out. — Frederick Lenz

The Lotus in Buddhism is a sacred symbol that represents purity and resurrection as attributes that develop through a spiritual awakening of the self. With humble beginnings in swamplands, the Lotus flower exquisitely blooms, pure and untainted, from this murky world it thrives in. The Lotus flower represents a higher state of mind, a strong spirit cultivated far from the suffering and temptations of this muddied world that personifies beauty through the present moment. — Forrest Curran

Clear sight has nothing to do with trying to see; it is just the realization that that the eyes will take in every detail all by themselves, for so long as they open they can hardly prevent the light from reaching them. In the same way, there is no difficulty in being fully aware of the eternal present as soon as it is seen that one cannot possibly be aware of anything else - that in concrete fact there is no past or future. — Alan W. Watts

What is Tantric Zen? Well, I don't think I can give you a straight answer, since I don't happen to be a very straight Zen master. — Frederick Lenz

When the mind is exhausted of images, it invents its own. — Gary Snyder

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

Tantric Zen is a state of mind — Frederick Lenz

A boddhisattva is someone who is on the way to becoming a buddha. All of us become boddhisattvas as soon as we start to take our Zen work seriously and the work we do contributes to creating a world in which all good actions become more efficacious. — David Brazier

Essays in Zen Buddhism — Alan W. Watts

Here's an example: someone says, "Master, please hand me the knife," and he hands them the knife, blade first. "Please give me the other end," he says. And the master replies, "What would you do with the other end?" This is answering an everyday matter in terms of the metaphysical.
When the question is, "Master, what is the fundamental principle of Buddhism?" Then he replies, "There is enough breeze in this fan to keep me cool." That is answering the metaphysical in terms of the everyday, and that is, more or less, the principle zen works on. The mundane and the sacred are one and the same. — 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

Nearly all samurai practice Zen - it is the Way of Enlightenment."
"Possibly the light of Zen is so strong that it has blinded me to its virtue." Yoshitoki smiled.
"It is very good discipline for the mind, as the martial arts are for the body." Kenmotsu looked very smug as he said this. "I do Zazen twice a week."
"I think it will do no-one any harm, though personally I find it more pleasant to think than to empty my mind of thought. — Erik Christian Haugaard

We find what's in our own heads. — T. Scott McLeod

What I term Zen, old Zen, the original face of Zen, new Zen, pure Zen, or Tantric Zen is - Zen in its essence. — Frederick Lenz

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

When no discriminating thoughts arise,
the old mind ceases to exist.
When thought objects vanish,
the thinking-subject vanishes,
as when the mind vanishes, objects vanish.
Things are objects because of the subject;
the mind is such because of things.
Understand the relativity of these two
and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness.
In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable
and each contains in itself the whole world.
If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine
you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion. — Sengcan

Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate. — Huang Po

Tantric Zen is all about the practice of zazen meditation. If you meditate well, you'll be in very powerful states of mind and then it really doesn't matter what you do. — Frederick Lenz

If you wish to have children, please do something for the world you will bring them into. That will make you someone who works for peace, in one way or another. — Thich Nhat Hanh

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

The person who's in the Zen monastery, who's doing a kind of poor job at meditating and a half-ass job cleaning the gardens is not doing very good yoga. — Frederick Lenz

If the eye never sleeps,
all dreams will naturally cease.
If the mind makes no discriminations,
the ten thousand things are as they are,
of single essence.
To understand the mystery of this One essence
is to be released from all entanglements.
When all things are seen equally
the timeless Self-essence is reached.
No comparisons or analogies are possible
in this causeless, relationless state.
Consider movement stationary
and the stationary in motion,
both movement and rest disappear.
When such dualities cease to exist
Oneness itself cannot exist.
To this ultimate finality
no law or description applies. — Sengcan

In Zen Buddhism an action is considered good when it brings happiness and well-being to oneself and others, evil when it brings suffering and harm to oneself and others. — Thich Thien-An

In Tantric Zen, career, relationships, the type of insurance you have - all things are part of your evolution, your awareness, your experience of the suchness of existence. — Frederick Lenz

Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun. — Alan W. Watts

As a dialectical teacher, I have had many lives where I have taught Zen and Tibetan Buddhism and mysticism. I teach in many different modalites. But the theme that unites them - is love. — 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

A recently deceased American Zen master and navy veteran, John Daido Loori, used to say that those who think Buddhism is just about stillness end up sitting very silently up to their necks in their own shit. — Mark Epstein

Courage is often associated with aggression, but instead should be seen as a willingness to act from the heart. — Donna Quesada

Every day Zuigan used to call out to himself, "Master!" and then he answered himself, "Yes, Sir!" And he added, "Awake, Awake!" and then answered, "Yes, Sir! Yes, Sir!"
"From now onwards, do not be deceived by others!" "No, Sir! I will not, Sir!"

— Wumen Huikai

Tantric Zen is not being kinky; nor is it being conservative and austere. It is eclectic. It is a real mixture of all things. — Frederick Lenz

What you know can never be the beyond. Whatever you experience is not the beyond. If there is any beyond, this movement of 'you' is absent. The absence of this movement probably is the beyond, but the beyond can never be experienced by you; it is when the 'you' is not there. Why are you trying to experience a thing that cannot be experienced? — U.G. Krishnamurti

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

Those who are already adept at some disciplines of the body will find that the study of Zen and meditation will give you much more control than you now have. — Frederick Lenz

We have to be in the present time, because only the present is real, only in the present can we be alive. We do not practice for the sake of the future, to be reborn in a paradise, but to be peace, to be compassion, to be joy right now. — Thich Nhat Hanh

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

[F]ast intercommunication between points is making all points the same point. — Alan W. Watts

As a matter of face, Zen is at present most fashionable in America among those who are least concerned with moral discipline. Zen has, indeed, become for us a symbol of moral revolt. It is true, the Zen-man's contempt for conventional and formalistic social custom is a healthy phenomenon, but it is healthy only because it presupposes a spiritual liberty based on freedom from passion, egotism and self-delusion. A pseudo-Zen attitude which seeks to justify a complete moral collapse with a few rationalizations based on the Zen Masters is only another form of bourgeois self-deception. It is not an expression of healthy revolt, but only another aspect of the same lifeless and inert conventionalism against which it appears to be protesting. — Thomas Merton

Whatever the world dishes up, we take it on
not on our own terms, but on the world's. — Steve Hagen

The son needs the father to have access to his source, and the father needs the son to have access to the future and the infinite. — Thich Nhat Hanh

In Zen Buddhism, "The Great Cessation" is a term that points to the abandoning of the effort to define one's self by any outer definition and to give up acts of futility. It is to let the world remain a mystery that cannot be captured by science, language, or any invention of the mind — Mike Scheidt

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

There is a Zen story about a man riding a horse that is galloping very quickly. Another man, standing alongside the road, yells at him, "Where are you going?" and the man on the horse yells back, "I don't know. Ask the horse." I think that is our situation. We are riding many horses that we cannot control. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days' worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out. — Ryokan

In Zen Buddhism, the greater your doubt, the greater will be your enlightenment. That is why doubt can be a good thing. If you are too sure, if you always have conviction, then you may be caught in your wrong perception for a long time. — Nhat Hanh

When you catch yourself slipping into a pool of negativity, notice how it derives from nothing other than resistance to the current situation. — Donna Quesada

[T]here is really nothing 'out there' to get because, already, within this moment, everything is whole and complete. — Steve Hagen

Let whatever happens, be what needs to happen, so that I may awaken. — T. Scott McLeod

Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment. (From 'Fukan zazengi') — Dogen

Tantric Zen, and the people who practice it, of course, make some people feel extremely uncomfortable. — Frederick Lenz

To have some deep feeling about Buddhism is not the point; we just do what we should do, like eating supper and going to bed. This is Buddhism. — Shunryu Suzuki

Zen professes
itself to be the spirit of Buddhism, but in fact it is the spirit of all
religions and philosophies, — D.T. Suzuki

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

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

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

Always stay in your own movie. — Ken Kesey

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

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

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

[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

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

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

Anywhere we go, we will have our self with us; we cannot escape ourselves. — Thich Nhat Hanh

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

A peaceful mind appreciates the present moment as the living embodiment of naked perfection, rather than a means to future attainment. — Eric Micha'el Leventhal

Last month, Dean Sheeter (whose name usually transports Franny when I mention it) approached me with his gracious smile and bull whip, and I am now lecturing to the faculty, their wives, and a few oppressively-deep type undergraduates every Friday on Zen and Mahayana Buddhism. A feat, I haven't a doubt, that will eventually earn me the Eastern Philosophy Chair in Hell. — J.D. Salinger

In Tantric Zen you can be humorous and make fun of anything or you can be very serious. — Frederick Lenz

Your immediate experience is Tantric Zen. How aware are you of your immediate experience? - Probably not that aware. — Frederick Lenz

When the outcome of a game is certain, we call it quits and begin another. This is why many
people object to having their fortunes told: not that fortunetelling is mere superstition or that the predictions would be horrible, but simply that the more surely the future is known, the less surprise and the less fun in living it. — Alan W. Watts

Tantric Zen is more suited for this age that we live in. It give you rules, but in a gentle way. It's not as demanding. — Frederick Lenz

Letting go takes a lot of courage sometimes. But once you let go, happiness comes very quickly. You won't have to go around search for it. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The impossibility of arriving at Truth by giving up your own authority and following the lights of others. Such a path will only lead to an opinion. — Steve Hagen

Tantric Zen leads to illumination and fun right here and now, which is why I like it. — Frederick Lenz

The teachings of Osho, in fact, encompass many religions, but he is not defined by any of them. He is an illuminating speaker on Zen, Taoism, Tibetan Buddhism, Christianity and ancient Greek philosophy ... and also a prolific author. — Nevill Drury

What sets Tibetan Buddhism apart from other Buddhist traditions - such as the Zen Buddhism of Japan or the Theravada tradition in Sri Lanka - is that while Tibetans aim to become enlightened, they don't want to enter Nirvana. — Scott Carney

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

Meditation is to be aware of what is going on: in your body, in your feelings, in your mind, and in the world. — Thich Nhat Hanh

We do so much, we run so quickly, the situation is difficult, and many people say, "Don't just sit there, do something." But doing more things may make the situation worse. So you should say, "Don't just do something, sit there." Sit there, stop, be yourself first, and begin from there. — Thich Nhat Hanh

There are things that I value now that I didn't when I first went over there, like Zen Buddhism, which has become part of my life over the last couple years. — Matthew Sweet

Prophecy is rash, but it may be that the publication of D.T. Suzuki's first Essays in Zen Buddhism in 1927 will seem to future generations as great an intellectual event as William of Moerbeke's Latin translations of Aristotle in the thirteenth century or Marsiglio Ficino's of Plato in the fifteenth. — D.T. Suzuki

My ethics, my sense of morality, my work ethic, my sense of compassion for suffering humanity, all of that comes directly out of the practice of poetry, as does my Buddhist practice. Poetry is a very important element in the history of Buddhism in general and in Zen in particular. It was really Zen that motivated me to change the way I perceive the world. — Sam Hamill

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