Zen Quotes
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Meaning is man-created. And because you constantly look for meaning, you start to feel meaninglessness. (Quote by - Osho)
We were created to be creative. Consider the amazing variety of tools we carry with and within our bodies. (Quote by - Thomas Krugliakov)
The life of Zen begins, therefore, in a disillusion with the pursuit of goals which do not really exist the good without the bad, the gratification of a self which is no more than an idea, and the morrow which never comes. (Quote by - Alan Watts)
If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly. (Quote by - Alan Watts)
Zen is not a philosophy, it is poetry. It does not propose, it simply persuades. It does not argue, it simply sings its own song. (Quote by - Osho)
Calm in quietude is not real calm. When you can be calm in the midst of activity, this is the true state of nature. Happiness in comfort is not real happiness. When you can be happy in the midst of hardship, then you see the true potential of the mind. (Quote by - Huanchu Daoren)
To remain caught up in ideas and words about Zen is, as the old masters say, to stink of Zen. (Quote by - Alan Watts)
So an ancient once said, "Accept the anxieties and difficulties of this life". Don't expect your practice to be clear of obstacles. Without hindrances the mind that seeks enlightenment may be burnt out. So an ancient once said, "Attain deliverance in disturbances". (Quote by - Kyong Ho)
Zen is a kind of unlearning. It teaches you how to drop that which you have learned, how to become unskillful again, how to become a child again, how to start existing without mind again, how to be here without any mind. (Quote by - Osho)
Zen is a double-edged sword, killing words and thoughts, yet at the same time, giving them life. Although beyond human intellect and philosophy, Zen is their root and source. (Quote by - Masao Abe)
Zen ... does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. (Quote by - Alan Watts)
Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine. (Quote by - Shunryu Suzuki)
Walking is Zen, sitting is Zen. (Quote by - Daishi)
Surfing soothes me, it's always been a kind of Zen experience for me. The ocean is so magnificent, peaceful, and awesome. The rest of the world disappears for me when I'm on a wave. (Quote by - Paul Walker)
I come to realize that mind is no other than mountains and rivers and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and stars. (Quote by - Dogen)
Zen is a totally different kind of religion. It brings humanness to religion. It is not bothered about anything superhuman; its whole concern is how to make ordinary life a blessing. (Quote by - Osho)
Each night the Tree of Nut out of naught knits neat nuts. (Quote by - Saiom Shriver)
All that's visible springs from causes intimate to you. While walking, sitting, lying down, the body itself is complete truth. If someone asks the inner meaning of this: Inside the treasury of dharma eye a single grain of dust. (Quote by - Dogen)
For Zen, man is the goal; man is the end unto himself. God is not something above humanity, God is something hidden within humanity. Man is carrying God in himself as a potentiality. (Quote by - Osho)
Not to be bound by rules, but to be creating one's own rules--this is the kind of life which Zen is trying to have us live. (Quote by - D. T. Suzuki)
Zen is all-inclusive. It never denies, it never says no to anything; it accepts everything and transforms it into a higher reality. (Quote by - Osho)
Like the measles, love is most dangerous when it comes late in life. (Quote by - Lord Byron)
The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one's hum drum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity. (Quote by - D. T. Suzuki)
You become that which you think you are. Or, it is not that you become it, but that the idea gets very deeply rooted - and that's what all conditioning is. (Quote by - Osho)
Zen says everything is divine so how can anything be special? All is special. Nothing is non-special so nothing can be special. (Quote by - Osho)
We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out. (Quote by - Ray Bradbury)
The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there. (Quote by - Robert M. Pirsig)
To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world. (Quote by - Heather Cortez)
Love doesn't make the world go around. Love is what makes the Ride worthwhile. (Quote by - Franklin P. Jones)
It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well. (Quote by - Henri Frederic Amiel)
The hottest love has the coldest end (Quote by - Socrates)
Zen opens a man's eyes to the greatest mystery as it is daily and hourly performed; it enlarges the heart to embrace eternity of time and infinity of space in its every palpitation; it makes us live in the world as if walking in the garden of Eden (Quotes by - D. T. Suzuki)
Those who see worldly life as an obstacle to Dharma see no Dharma in everyday actions. They have not yet discovered that there are no everyday actions outside of Dharma. (Quote by - Dogen)
One has to reach to the absolute state of awareness: that is Zen. You cannot do it every morning for a few minutes or for half an hour and then forget all about it. It has to become like your heartbeat. You have to sit in it, you have to walk in it. Yes, you have even to sleep in it. (Quote by - Osho )
Zen is the game of insight, the game of discovering who you are beneath the social masks. (Quote by - R. H. Blyth)
At my Rolling Stones' tour, the camera was a protection. I used it in a Zen way. (Quote by - Annie Leibovitz)
Don't seek, don't search, don't ask, don't knock, don't demand - relax. If you relax, it comes. If you relax, it is there. If you relax, you start vibrating with it. (Quote by - Osho)
Zen says that if you drop knowledge - and within knowledge everything is included; your name, your identity, everything, because this has been given to you by others - if you drop all that has been given by others, you will have a totally different quality to your being: innocence. This will be a crucifixion of the persona, the personality, and there will be a resurrection of your innocence. You will become a child again, reborn. (Quote by - Osho)
All that is great cannot be possessed - and that is one of the most foolish things man goes on doing. We want to possess. (Quote by - Osho)
No matter what verbal space you try to enclose Zen in, it resists, and spills over ... the Zen attitude is that words and truth are incompatible, or at least that no words can capture truth. (Quote by - DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER)
Pleasure of love lasts a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime. (Quote by - Bette Davis)
In Japanese art, space assumed a dominant role and its position was strengthened by Zen concepts. (Quote by - Stephen Gardiner)
Zen has no theory. It is a non-theoretical approach into reality. It has no doctrine and no dogma - hence it has no church, no priest, no pope. (Quote by - Osho)
Zen is mind-less activity, that is, Mind-ful activity, and it may often be advisable to emphasize the mind, and say, Take care of the thoughts and the actions will take care of themselves. (Quote by - R. H. Blyth)
The hardest thing to do is watch the one you love, love someone else. (Quote by - Anonymous)
Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. (Quote by - Alan Watts)
You cannot describe it or draw it. You cannot praise it enough or perceive it. No place can be found in which to put the Original Face; it will not disappear even when the universe is destroyed. (Quote by - Mumon)
The moon is brighter since the barn burned. (Quote by - Basho)
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. (Quote by - Zen Wisdom)
The feminine is more powerful than the masculine, the soft is more powerful than the hard, the water is more powerful than the rock. (Quote by - Osho)
Yes, when you see for the first time, a great laughter arises in you - the laughter about the whole ridiculousness of your misery, the laughter about the whole foolishness of your problems, the laughter about the whole absurdity of your suffering. (Quote by - Osho)
Children are natural Zen masters; their world is brand new in each and every moment. (Quote by - John Bradshaw)
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. (Quote by - Robert Frost)
There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon. (Quote by - Basho)
In Zen, poverty is voluntary, and considered not really as poverty so much as simplicity, freedom, unclutteredness. (Quote by - Alan Watts)
To what shall I liken the world? Moonlight, reflected in dewdrops. Shaken from a crane's bill. (Quote by - Dogen)
Do not seek the truth. Only cease to cherish opinions. (Quote by - Zen Wisdom)
Zen in it's essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one's being, and it points the way from bondage to freedom (Quote by - D.I.Suzuki)
The disciple is not hankering for knowledge; he wants to see, not to know. He wants to be. He is no longer interested in having more knowledge; he wants to have more being. (Quote by - Osho)
Zen teaches that once we can open up to the inevitability of our demise, we can begin to transform that situation and lighten up about it. (Quote by - Allen Kleinv
We can see unmistakeably that there is an inner relationship between Zen and the warrior's life. (Quote by - D. T. Suzuki)
Zen is not morality, it is aesthetics. It does not impose a code of morality. it does not give you any commandments: do this, don't do that. (Quote by - Osho)
A Zen master used to say, It is clear and so it is hard to see. A dunce once searched for a fire with a lighted lantern. Had he known what fire was, he could have cooked his rice much sooner. (Quote by - Osho)
Refraining from all evil, not clinging to birth and death, working in deep compassion for all sentient beings, respecting those over you and pitying those below you, without any detesting or desiring, worrying or lamentation - this is what is called Buddha. Do not search beyond it. (Quote by - Dogen)
This is the Zen approach: nothing is there to be done. There is nothing to do. One has just to be. Have a rest and be ordinary and be natural. (Quote by - Osho)
The spaces between your fingers were created so that another's could fill them in. (Quote by - Anonymous)
In autumn even though I may see it again, how can I sleep with the moon this evening? (Quote by - Dogen)
Zen says: be empty. Look without any idea. Look into the nature of things but with no idea, with no prejudice, with no presupposition. (Quote by - Osho)
Zen Buddhism is a discipline where belief isn't necessary. (Quote by - David Sylvian)
The mind that does not understand is the Buddha. There is no other. (Quote by - Ma-tsu)
God is a synergetic experience. Science can never reveal it, philosophy can never come to it - only a poetic approach, a very passive, very loving approach, can. (Quote by - Osho)
I made a photograph of a garden in Kyoto, the Zen garden, which is a rectangle. But a photograph taken from any one point will not show, well it shows a rectangle, but not with ninety degree angles. (Quote by - David Hockney)
The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both. (Quote by - Zen Wisdom)
How can you think and hit at the same time? (Quote by - Yogi Berra)
The modern mind has lost all capacity to wonder. It has lost all capacity to look into the mysterious, into the miraculous - because of knowledge, because it thinks it knows. (Quote by - Osho)
You and your brain are two things. The brain is your machinery just like everything else is your machinery. This hand is my mechanism; I use it. My brain is my mechanism; I use it. (Quote by - Osho)
Zen people love Buddha so tremendously that they can even play jokes upon him. It is out of great love; they are not afraid. (Quote by - Osho)
Golf is a spiritual game. It's like Zen. You have to let your mind take over. (Quote by - Amy Alcott)
The moment you enter into the world of words you start falling away from that which is. The more you enter into language, the farther you are away from existence. (Quote by - Osho)
Zen is non-serious. Zen has a tremendous sense of humor. No other religion has evolved so much that it can have that sense of humor. (Quote by - Osho)
Learning Zen is a phenomenon of gold and dung. Before you understand it, it's like gold; after you understand it, it's like dung. (Quote by - Zen Saying)
The future of humanity will move closer and closer toward the approach of Zen, because the meeting of the East and West is possible only through something like Zen, which is earthly and yet unearthly. (Quote by - Osho)
Whether talking or remaining silent, Whether moving or standing quiet, The Essence itself is ever at ease. (Quote by - Daishi)
Zen, per se, is not just an art, it's not just a religion, it's a realisation. (Quote by - Gene Clark)
Working out is my biggest hobby. It's my Zen hour. I just zone out. (Quote by - Zac Efron)
We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with us, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love. (Quote by - Anonymous)
And the more you become aware of the unknown self - if you become aware of it - the more you realize that it is inseparably connected with everything else that is. (Quote by - Allan Watts)
The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers. (Quote by - Basho)
Those who know don't tell and those who tell don't know. (Quote by - Zen Wisdom)
The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention. (Quote by - Allan Watts)
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. (Quote by - Matthew Sweet)
The moment you start seeing life as non-serious, a playfulness, all the burden on your heart disappears. All the fear of death, of life, of love - everything disappears. One starts living with a very light weight or almost no weight. So weightless one becomes, one can fly in the open sky. Zens greatest contribution is to give you an alternative to the serious man. The serious man has made the world, the serious man has made all the religions. He has created all the philosophies, all the cultures, all the moralities; everything that exists around you is a creation of the serious man. Zen has dropped out of the serious world. It has created a world of its own which is very playful, full of laughter, where even great masters behave like children. (Quote by - Osho)
Sit quietly doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself. (Quote by - Zen Wisdom)
