Zen Quotes
Thich Nhat Hanh
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.
2826 Jim Butcher
Life is a journey. Time is a river. The door is ajar
2676 Robert M. Pirsig
The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.
3278 Natalie Goldberg
We are searching for the core of our lives; our culture intuits that writing, that ancient activity, might be the pathway...Awakening does not feed ego's needs and desires; it pulverizes the self. Our society couldn't knowingly bear such reduction, so we've tricked ourselves into the same path but call it writing.
2199 Eric Micha'el Leventhal
Search not for happiness outside yourself, for nothing could be further from the truth.
2976 Alina Radoi
if only people stopped acting like they've been asked to donate a lung every time somebody asks for something the world would be a better place
1086 Ian Tucker
Every answer you ever need lies within your own silence..
2664 Louisa Edwards
Winslow bounced over on the balls of his feet, clearly not experiencing any sort of crash. 'Aren't your guys nervous? I'm nervous as all hell.'
'There's nothing to be nervous about,' Beck said, joining them. 'Nerves are only useful when they can spur you on to work harder, faster, better. Once the work is done, they become pointless.
4029 Dawn Gluskin
You are not your thoughts!! This simple yet powerful statement can greatly change the quality of your life.
2961 Dōgen
To escape from the world means that one's mind is not concerned with the opinions of the world.
1168 Chris Prentiss
The more you engage in any type of emotion or behavior, the greater your desire for it will become.
2419 Chris Prentiss
If you feel depressed for an hour, you've produced approximately eighteen billion new cells that have more receptors calling out for depressed-type peptides and fewer calling out for feel-good peptides.
3180 Chris Prentiss
Again, all of life presents us with two basic ways to treat events. We can either label them "god for us" or "bad for us." The event is only an event. It's how we treat the event that determines what it becomes in our lives. The event doesn't make that determination- we do.
4271 Dōgen
One must be deeply aware of the impermanence of the world.
2832 Alan W. Watts
The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.
3742 Amit Ray
Silence is the language of Om. We need silence to be able to reach our Self. Both internal and external silence is very important to feel the presence of that supreme Love.
4070 Ray Bradbury
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.
2835 Bob Dylan
Life is more or less a lie, but then again, that's exactly the way we want it to be.
4158 Susan Gordon Lydon
Letting go is the lesson. Letting go is always the lesson. Have you ever noticed how much of our agony is all tied up with craving and loss?
2367 Dōgen
If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
1844 Alan W. Watts
Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.
3012 Shunryu Suzuki
A student, filled with emotion and crying, implored, "Why is there so much suffering?"
Suzuki Roshi replied, "No reason.
4069 Amy Joy
Who we are now is all that really matters.
1732 Shunryu Suzuki
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few
4794 Ryokan
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.
2458 Confucius
The way out is through the door. Why is it that no one will use this method?
1056 Eckhart Tolle
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them cats.
1831 Kabir
Many have died; you also will die. The drum of death is being beaten. The world has fallen in love with a dream. Only sayings of the wise will remain.
4294 Sengcan
When mind exists undisturbed in the Way, nothing in the world can offend, and when a thing can no longer offend it ceases to exist in the old way. When no discriminating thoughts arise, the old mind ceases to exist.
3374 Sengcan
To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality; to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality. The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth. Stop talking and thinking and there is nothing you will not be able to know.
3308 Sengcan
For the unified mind in accord with the Way all self-centered striving ceases. Doubts and irresolutions vanish and life in true faith is possible. With a single stroke we are freed from bondage; nothing clings to us and we hold nothing. All is empty, clear, self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind's power.
3292 Sengcan
When thought is in bondage the truth is hidden, for everything is murky and unclear, and the burdensome practice of judging brings annoyance and weariness. What benefit can be derived from distinctions and separations?
1171 Sengcan
One thing, all things: move among and intermingle, without distinction. To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection. To live in this faith is the road to non-duality, because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.
4461 Steven L. Peck
[Y]ou are here to learn something. Don’t try to figure out what it is. This can be frustrating and unproductive.
1519 Haruki Murakami
There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night.
2741 Santōka Taneda
Haiku is not a shriek, a howl, a sigh, or a yawn; rather, it is the deep breath of life.
4718 Matsuo Bashō
When composing a verse let there not be a hair's breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.
3702 Yosa Buson
In pale moonlight / the wisteria's scent / comes from far away.
2735 Ikkyu
don't wait for the man standing in the
snow
to cut off his arm help him now
3272 Ikkyu
we're lost where the mind can't find us
utterly lost
3223 Ikkyu
it isn't that we're alone or not alone
whose voice do you want mine? yours?
3682 Ikkyu
that stone Buddha deserves all the
birdshit it gets
I wave my skinny arms like a tall
flower in the wind
4177 Ikkyu
I'd love to give you something
but what would help?
4698 Ikkyu
Hearing a crow with no mouth
Cry in the deep
Darkness of the night,
I feel a longing for
My father before he was born.
2495 Ikkyu
clouds very high look
not one word helped them get up there
4501 Ikkyu
born born everything is always born
thinking about it try not to
2845 Shinsho
Does one really have to fret
About enlightenment?
No matter what road I travel,
I’m going home.
2096 Donna Quesada
What we can change is our perceptions, which have the effect of changing everything.
3814 Donna Quesada
The effects you will have on your students are infinite and currently unknown; you will possibly shape the way they proceed in their careers, the way they will vote, the way they will behave as partners and spouses, the way they will raise their kids.
3983 David Brazier
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.
1285 Chris Prentiss
Zen is a journey of exploration and a way of living that, in and of itself, does not belong to any one religion or tradition. It is about experiencing life in the here and now and about removing the dualistic distinctions between "I" and "you" between "subject" and "objective", between our spiritual and our ordinary, everyday activities.
3961 Chris Prentiss
What determines each person's state of happiness or unhappiness is not the event itself, but what the event means to that person.
3277 Vernon Kitabu Turner
It is not enough to believe in yourself alone; there will come a day when you will fail yourself. That is why we must also believe in a supportive power beyond our control - a safety net, a super intelligence - or there is no hope for the moment when all our strength is gone.
3412 Stephen Batchelor
We took a bus to the nearby monastery of one of the last great Tang dynasty Chan masters, Yun-men. Yun-men was known for his pithy “one word” Zen. When asked “What is the highest teaching of the Buddha?” he replied: “An appropriate statement.” On another occasion, he answered: “Cake.” I admired his directness.
4769 Annastacia Dickerson
For some reason when I type the word "love" in my iPad it keeps autocorrecting to "live". I find it oddly profound. My ipad IS. My iPad is ZEN:
“Only the iPad that autocorrects can write the true thing.
2481 Kamal Ravikant
Life is a river," a wise friend told me. "It's flowing. You're never at the same place twice.
1067 D.T. Suzuki
When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect the mountain exercises vanishes into the air.
2986 Dag Hammarskjold
The dizziness in the face of les espaces infinis-only overcome if we dare to gaze into them without any protection. And accept them as the reality before which we must justify our existence. For this is the truth we must reach to live, that everything is and we just in it.
1854 Alan W. Watts
Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.
2554 Eric Micha'el Leventhal
The sacred stillness of your brilliant heart
has as the myriad wonders masqueraded.
But if you knew this secret from the start,
then you'd have quit this Game before you played it.
3152 Eric Micha'el Leventhal
Sometimes it takes a miracle to remind us that the only permanent condition is that of impermanence.
3626 Alan W. Watts
The brush must draw by itself. This cannot happen if one does not practice constantly. But neither can it happen if one makes an effort.
1740 Kamal Ravikant
When something comes from within, when it is a part of you, you have no choice but to live it, to express it.
4976 Beckah Krahula
There are no mistakes in Zentangle, so there is no need for an eraser. If you do not like the look of a stroke you have made, it then becomes only an opportunity to create a new tangle, or transform it using an old trusty pattern. A Zentangle tile is meant to be a surprise that unfolds before the creator's eyes, one stroke at a time.
1468 Huang Po
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.
3929 Karen Maezen Miller
Your life is your practice. Your spiritual practice does not occur someplace other than in your life right now, and your life is nowhere other than where you are. You are looking for answers, insight, and wisdom that you already possess. Live the life in front of you, be the life you are, and see what you find out for yourself.
4081 Donna Quesada
When you catch yourself slipping into a pool of negativity, notice how it derives from nothing other than resistance to the current situation.
1698 Donna Quesada
When you blame, you open up a world of excuses, because as long as you're looking outside, you miss the opportunity to look inside, and you continue to suffer.
4082 Bodhidharma
But people of the deepest understanding look within, distracted by nothing. Since a clear mind is the Buddha, they attain the understanding of a Buddha without using the mind.
3719 Donna Quesada
Courage is often associated with aggression, but instead should be seen as a willingness to act from the heart.
2425 Jennifer Sodini
We grow up to believe that we are supposed to somehow "become" who we are meant to be through the trial-by-fire that is life here on planet Earth.
Reality is...there's no "becoming".
It's actually all an "un-becoming", only to reunite with who you were born to be in the first place before society told you otherwise.
3290 Jennifer Sodini
The glass is neither half empty, nor half full. The glass is just a glass and it's content can perpetually change with your perception.
1341 Wu Cheng'en
With passions stilled and one's nature firm, all destinies are in harmony; When the full moon of contemplation is reached you will be pure.
4555 Shih-t'ou
I am Not, but the Universe is my Self.
2898 Jasz Gill
I'm born with wild horses in my head..
With an imagination to conquer this world..
I will not settle for comforts of a golden cage.
2735 Francis Harold Cook
The object of Zen is not to kill all feelings and become anesthetized to pain and fear. The object of Zen is to free us to scream loudly and fully when it is time to scream.
4629 Bert McCoy
Be aware of yourself without thinking or looking in the mirror
1498 Thich Nhat Hanh
Anywhere we go, we will have our self with us; we cannot escape ourselves.
3343 Kevin Michel
Every hour of your life that ticks by, there are numerous points and moments when you can choose to pause - and be aware of your mental and physical state. At any given point, you can freeze the flow that is your life, and be fully conscious for a moment.
1609 Jon Kabat-Zinn
See for yourself whether letting go when a part of you really wants to hold on doesn't bring a deeper satisfaction than clinging.
1368 Eric Micha'el Leventhal
A peaceful mind appreciates the present moment as the living embodiment of naked perfection, rather than a means to future attainment.
4721 T. Scott McLeod
You will bring yourself the suffering you need to bring yourself so that you may awaken.
4554 T. Scott McLeod
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.
2512 T. Scott McLeod
Maybe it’s something which can’t be defined,” Enso Roshi says. “Maybe it’s a question, to be lived.
4650 Ian Tucker
Almost everything that I've ever worried about has never happened ..
1845 Thich Nhat Hanh
Some people live as though they are already dead. There are people moving around us who are consumed by their past, terrified of their future, and stuck in their anger and jealousy. They are not alive; they are just walking corpses.
3536 Jack Kerouac
When you've understood this scripture, throw it away. If you can't understand this scripture, throw it away. I insist on your freedom.
4720 Kamal Ravikant
The things I carry are my thoughts. That's it. They are the only weight. My thoughts determine whether I am free and light or burdened.
2828 Chris Prentiss
Who you allow into the circle of your life will make the difference in the quality of your life.
1381 Hongzhi Zhengjue
Sing before the spirits and dance with the earth deities
And you will be able to compose your own tune.
Then you and I, united, will clap hands joyously,
Singing 'tum-tiddly-um tum-tiddly-um-tum.
4477 Seneca
It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.
1049