Zen Quotes - Page 3

Canning is a whole world of a thing to do. It requires that you get out of your head. It's a Zen thing. You cannot be wondering about your inadequacies and how they drove Bob off and be making jelly. You'll wind up with big, cylindrical jujubes.

I'm a practicing Zen Buddhist and I'm influenced by my readings in that tradition, such as the notion that everyone is born a perfect being and we spend most of our lives with a clouded vision trying to realize our perfection," he says. At critical moments in the book, T.S. registers his inkling of this realization. When he makes his maps, it feels like taking down dictation from the universe.

Gracious is the giver who can host and also be a stranger at the door.

Benjamin Aubrey Myers

If you are upset or nervous, that is proof you lack something. Do not be sad or gloomy - foster virtue, feel compassion, and you can save even devils.

Awa Kenzo - Zen Bow

True wisdomis not borrowed knowledgeit must be basedon my own experience.That which I learn from othersis memory, not wisdom

Beopjeong

In our practice we have no particular purpose or goal, nor any special object of worship.

How much does he lack himself who must have many things?

Careful! Even moonlit dewdrops, If you’re lured to watch, Are a wall before the Truth. — Sogyo

Sogyo

Consider the sunlight. You may see it is near, yet if you follow it from world to world you will never catch it in your hands. Then you may describe it as far away and, lo, you will see it just before your eyes. Follow it and, behold, it escapes you; run from it and it follows you close. You can neither possess it nor have done with it. From this example you can understand how it is with the true Nature of all things and, henceforth, there will be no need to grieve or to worry about such things.

Huang Po

Hard to restrain, unstable is this mind; it flits wherever it lists. Good it is to control the mind. A controlled mind brings happiness.

My thatched hut; the whole sky Is its roof The mountains are its hedge, And it has the sea for a garden. I’m inside with nothing at all, Not even a bag, And yet there are visitors who say “It’s hidden behind a bamboo door” — tMuso Soseki

Zen probably won’t solve a single one of our problems. What it might do is help us relate differently to what we consider problems.

The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.

Masanobu Fukuoka

When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the attempt to possess them, the essence of natural farming will be realized. The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.

Masanobu Fukuoka

It is a wretched thing that the young men of today are so contriving and so proud of their material posessions. Men with contriving hearts are lacking in duty. Lacking in duty, they will have no self-respect.

Tsunetomo Yamamoto

Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed, do not squander your life.

Dōgen

Until today, it really pissed me off that I'd become this totally centered Zen Master, and nobody had noticed. Still, i'm doing the little FAX thing. I write little HAIKU things and FAX them around to everyone. When i pass people in the hall at work, I get toally ZEN right in everyone's hostile little FACE.

Chuck Palahniuk

Nothing can be gained by extensive study and wide reading. Give them up immediately.

Dōgen

Preoccupied with a single leaf you won't see the tree.

Vagabond

The baby looks at things all day without winking; that is because his eyes are not focused on any particular object. He goes without knowing where he is going, and stops without knowing what he is doing. He merges himself within the surroundings and moves along with it. These are the principles of mental hygiene.

Zhuangzi

Consider your own place in the universal oneness of which we are all a part, from which we all arise, and to which we all return.

When you paint Spring, do not paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots, but just paint Spring. To paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots is to paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots - it is not yet painting Spring.

Dōgen

He knows not where he's going,For the ocean will decide,Its not the destination,It's the glory of the ride

Zen is not some fancy, special art of living. Our teaching is just to live, always in reality, in its exact sense. To make our effort, moment after moment, is our way. In an exact sense, the only thing we actually can study in our life is that on which we are working in each moment. We cannot even study Buddha’s words.”-“So we should be concentrated with our full mind and body on what we do; and we should be faithful, subjectively and objectively, to ourselves, and especially to our feelings. Even when you do not feel so well, it is better to express how you feel without any particular attachment or intention. So you may say, “Oh, I am sorry, I do not feel well.

Earth, mountains, rivers, hidden in this nothingness.In this nothingness, earth, mountains, rivers revealed.Spring flowers, winter snows.There's no being or non-being, nor denial itself.

The point of the spiritual life is to realize Truth. But you will never understand the spiritual life, or realize Truth, if you measure it by your own yardstick.

Dainin Katagiri

14. Muddy Road Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling. Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unble to cross the intersection. "Come on, girl," said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carriedher over the mud. Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he could no longer restrain himself. "We monks don't go near females," he told Tanzan, "especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?" "I left the girl there," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?

Do not seek for the truth, only stop having an opinion.

tahiya hote pavan nahin pani, tahiya srishti kown utpati;tahiya hote kali nahin phula, tahiya hote garbh nahi mula;tahiya hote vidya nahin Veda, tahiya hote shabd nahin swada;tahiya hote pind nahin basu,nahin dhar dharni na pavan akasu;tahiya hote guru nahin chela, gamya agamya na panth duhela.Sakhi: avigati ki gati ka kahown, jake gawn na thawngun bihuna pekhana, ka kahi lijai nawnIn that state there is no air or water, and no creation or creator; There is no bud or flower, and no fetus or semen; There is no education or Vedas, and no word or taste; There is no body or settlement, and no earth, air or space; There is no guru or disciple, and no easy or difficult path.Sakhi: That state is very strange. I cannot explain it. It has no village or resting place. That state is without gunas (qualities). What name can on give it?

Kabir

A pity it is evening, yetI do love the water of this springseeing how clear it is, how clean;rays of sunset gleam on it,lighting up its ripples, making itone with those who travelthe roads; I turn and facethe moon; sing it a song, thenlisten to the sound of the windamongst the pines.

Li Bai

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

1. A Cup of Tea Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), recieved a university professor who came to inqure about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he could no longer restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!" "Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your up?

Not being tense but ready.Not thinking but not dreaming.Not being set but flexible.Liberation from the uneasy sense of confinement.It is being wholly and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come.

Bruce Lee

...it's like this. Sometimes, when you've a very long street ahead of you, you think how terribly long it is and feel sure you'll never get it swept. And then you start to hurry. You work faster and faster and every time you look up there seems to be just as much left to sweep as before, and you try even harder, and you panic, and in the end you're out of breath and have to stop--and still the street stretches away in front of you. That's not the way to do it.You must never think of the whole street at once, understand? You must only concentrate on the next step, the next breath, the next stroke of the broom, and the next, and the next. Nothing else.That way you enjoy your work, which is important, because then you make a good job of it. And that's how it ought to be.And all at once, before you know it, you find you've swept the whole street clean, bit by bit. what's more, you aren't out of breath. That's important, too... (28-29)

Flow with whatever may happen, and let your mind be free: Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.

Zhuangzi

It's like you took a bottle of ink and you threw it at a wall. Smash! And all that ink spread. And in the middle, it's dense, isn't it? And as it gets out on the edge, the little droplets get finer and finer and make more complicated patterns, see? So in the same way, there was a big bang at the beginning of things and it spread. And you and I, sitting here in this room, as complicated human beings, are way, way out on the fringe of that bang. We are the complicated little patterns on the end of it. Very interesting. But so we define ourselves as being only that. If you think that you are only inside your skin, you define yourself as one very complicated little curlique, way out on the edge of that explosion. Way out in space, and way out in time. Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you're a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don't feel that we're still the big bang. But you are. Depends how you define yourself. You are actually--if this is the way things started, if there was a big bang in the beginning-- you're not something that's a result of the big bang. You're not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are. When I meet you, I see not just what you define yourself as--Mr so-and- so, Ms so-and-so, Mrs so-and-so--I see every one of you as the primordial energy of the universe coming on at me in this particular way. I know I'm that, too. But we've learned to define ourselves as separate from it.

It is easy to believe we are each waves and forget we are also the ocean.

Commander, I always used to consider that you had a definite anti-authoritarian streak in you.”“Sir?”“It seems that you have managed to retain this even though you are authority.”“Sir?”“That’s practically zen.

Terry Pratchett

I discovered that those who seldom dwell on their emotions know better than anyone else just what an emotion is.

John Cage

When fishermen cannot go to sea, they repair nets.

Nabil Sabio Azadi

A falcon hovers at the edge of the sky.Two gulls drift slowly up the river.Vulnerable while they ride the wind,they coast and glide with ease.Dew is heavy on the grass below,the spider's web is ready.Heaven's ways include the human:among a thousand sorrows, I stand alone.

Du Fu

Like wind-- In it, with it, of it. Of it just like a sail, so light and strong that, even when it is bent flat, it gathers all the power of the wind without hampering its course.Like light-- In light, lit through by light, transformed into light. Like the lens which disappears in the light it focuses.Like wind. Like light.Just this--on these expanses, on these heights.

Dag Hammarskjöld

Humility before the flower at the timber line is the gate which gives access to the path up the open fell.

Dag Hammarskjöld

No such thing as time travel, he'd rumbled patiently, once. Only live with what you've done, and try in the future to do what you're happy to live with.

Richard K. Morgan

Regarding the creative: never assume you're the master, only the student. Your audience will determine if you're masterful.

Don Roff

50 Zen, read shit.... BECOME MASTER!

Does one really have to fretAbout enlightenment?No matter what road I travel,I’m going home.

Shinsho

The path of Tao is not that of sudden enlightenment. It is not like Zen. Zen is sudden enlightenment, Tao is gradual growth.

Osho

Here, then, is the last moment of true perception, a man fishing in a red jacket and a cloudy sky reflected on opaque water.

Michael Cunningham

All you do is think. Because all you do is think, you've constructed two separate worlds—one inside your head and one outside. Just the fact that you tolerate this enormous dissonance—why, that's a great intangible failure already.

Sōseki Natsume

Almost everything that I've ever worried about has never happened ..

Suffering builds character and impels you to penetrate life’s secrets. It’s the path of great artists, great religious leaders, great social reformers. The problem is not suffering per se, but rather our identification with our own ego: our divided, dualistic, cramped view of things. “We are too ego-centered,” Suzuki tells Cage. “The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow. We seem to carry it all the time from childhood up to the time we finally pass away.”Adolescent love gives us the first chance to break the shell. Sexual love makes the ego lose itself in the object it loves. “When the ego-shell is broken and the ‘other’ is taken into its own body, we can say that the ego has denied itself or that the ego has taken its first steps towards the infinite.…The religious consciousness is now fully awakened, and all the possible ways of escaping from the struggle or bringing it to an end are most earnestly sought in every direction. Books are read, lectures are attended, sermons are greedily taken in, and various religious exercises or disciplines are tried.”Suzuki says that sexual love is a vehicle of liberation? A crack in the ego shell? A path to the infinite?At this point, if I were Cage, I would buy the book and take it home.

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')

Dōgen

The prospect of future lives in remote heavens as a compensation for the inadequacy of our present lives is a bad tradeoff for losing out on the present.

Francis Harold Cook

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

Francis Harold Cook

There were so many beliefs which we had about the world, which then influenced everything, everything, about how we saw the world and interacted in the world and were with others. Everything. It was profound to me, amazing, the ramifications, the implications, the far-reaching impact that one’s beliefs could have on the world. It was actually mind-blowing for me. Figuratively speaking. Like, it was just, holy shit. Look at that. And nobody, hardly anybody sees it. They’re just ideas. Ideas. And yet, I’d believed them for so long, and still, was still shirking free of them. How was it that we believed in them, so readily, so easily?

T. Scott McLeod

Can the water in the valleys ever stop and rest?When the water finally reaches the sea, it becomes great waves.

Francis Harold Cook

When I was young, I lacked certainty, too,” he says. “I have the certainty, now, of not needing certainty. I have the certainty, of uncertainty. The peace, with being uncertain. All is good. All is holy. Whatever you choose, it can be fine. Hatred never ceases with hatred, but with love alone is healed. Rejection never ceases with rejection, but with acceptance alone is healed.

T. Scott McLeod

Let me give you a wonderful Zen practice. Wake up in the morning...look in the mirror, and laugh at yourself.

Bernie Glassman

Life gives you exactly what you need to awaken.

T. Scott McLeod

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