Zen Buddhism Quotes

When you break something, is your first impulse to throw it away? Or do you repair it but feel a sadness because it is no longer "perfect"? Whatever the case, you might want to consider the way the Japanese treated the items used in their tea ceremony. Even though they were made from the simplest materials... these teacups and bowls were revered for their plain lines and spiritual qualities. There were treated with the utmost care, integrity and respect.For this reason, a cup from the tea ceremony was almost never broken. When an accident did occur and a cup was broken, there were certain instances in which the cup was repaired with gold. Rather than trying to restore it in a what they would cover the gace that it ahad been broken, the cracks were celebrated in a bold and spirited way. The thin paths of shining gold completely encircled the ceramic cup, announcing to the world that the cup was broken and repaired and vulnerable to change.And in this way, its value was even further enhanced.

[E]ven in getting the wonderful things we long for, we tend to live in want of something more[.]

When you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely, a trace of yourself will be left in what you do.

Zen has a pronounced iconoclastic tendency, and regards the study of texts, doctrines, and dogmas as a potential hindrance to spiritual awakening, relying instead on humour, spontaneity, unconventionality, poetry, and other forms of artistic expression to communicate the idea of enlightenment

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

Question everything, even the question mark, that shepherd's crook floating in the air above that small round rockIf you - stubbornly - still wish to be unhappy,maybe you can grasp it.

Truth is not … something to believe or disbelieve. The things we believe are always less than Truth[.]

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.

The only 'elephant' left in the room is love.

So, without telling any of my Zen-snob buddies, I liked to pretend everything was the Pure Land, that my life was already perfect as it was.

God is the Self of the world, but you can't see God for the same reason that, without a mirror, you can't see your own eyes, and you certainly can't bite your own teeth or look inside your head. Your self is that cleverly hidden because it is God hiding.

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.

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.

[W]e have endless opportunities to forget the self – in planting a tree for future generations; in creating a poem, a meal, a vessel of clay;

Life gives you exactly what you need to awaken.

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

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.

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

There's nothing you can find - … nothing you can even imagine – that doesn't originate, develop, or exist in relation to other things.

[I]mpermanence [is] the very thing that makes [life] vibrant, wonderful, and alive.

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.

Belief may serve as a useful stopgap measure in the absence of actual experience, but once you see … [it] becomes unnecessary.

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

The Zen Monk Kyō Has Changed His Name to Mujū Dōryū. I Wrote This Verse to Celebrate The Great Prospects That Lie Before HimUnwillingness to remain in the ruts of former Buddha patriarchs Unsurpassed aspiration and fierce passion to achieve the Way These are precisely the qualities found in a true Zen monk Attained the very moment you "have been there and back.

We imagine that things come into existence, endure for a while, and then pass out of existence

Life's Journeys Inward seeking moves towards being-time Outward seeking journies among life's ornaments

Anywhere we go, we will have our self with us; we cannot escape ourselves.

[H]ow can something cease to exist that has no solid existence in the first place?

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

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.

The buddha-dharma … is about directly seeing Truth, prior to forming any ideas about it. It is about responding to each particular situation as it comes … , not according to some … program of dos and don'ts.

On my journey from the fantastical to the practical, spirituality has gone from being a mystical experience to something very ordinary and a daily experience. Many don’t want this, instead they prefer spiritual grandeur, and I believe that is what keeps enlightenment at bay. We want big revelations of complexity that validates our perceptions of the divine. What a let down it was to Moses when God spoke through a burning bush! But that is exactly the simplicity of it all. Our spiritual life is our ordinary life and it is very grounded in every day experience. For me, it is the daily practice of kindness, mindfulness, happiness, and peace.

Good and bad aren't absolutes. They are beliefs, judgements, ideas based on limited knowledge as well as on the inclinations of our minds.

It is both dangerous and absurd for our world to be a group of communions mutually excommunicate.

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?

The essence of your mind is not born, so it will never die. It is not an existence, which is perishable. It is not an emptiness, which is a mere void. It has neither colour nor form. It enjoys no pleasures and suffers no pains.I know you are very ill. Like a good Zen student, you are facing that sickness squarely. You may not know exactly who is suffering, but question yourself: What is the essence of this mind? Think only of this. You will need no more. Covet nothing. Your end which is endless is as a snowflake dissolving in pure air.

Before we were born we had no feeling; we were one with the universe. This is called "mind-only," or "essence of mind," or "big mind," After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falling from the waterfall is separated by the wind and rocks, then we have feeling. You have difficulty because you have feeling. You attach to the feeling you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created. When you do not realize that you are one with the river, or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact we have no fear of death anymore, and we have no actual difficulty in our life.

We can only be here. We can't leave. We are always here.

Life is a whirlwind of many opportunities. Choose to embrace all of them in deepest gratitude. Learn to forgive yourself and honour the heart that beats within you, as well as the head that rests on your shoulders. Learn how to believe in people again and not be judging or cynical to various beliefs.We are all of one light on this one Earth, and loving humanity makes all the difference.

Good times come and go. And bad times do the same.

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

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

The only way we can be free in each moment is to become what each moment is.

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

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.

[A] view of the world is nothing more than a set of beliefs, a way to freeze the world in our mind. … [T]his can never match Reality, … because the world isn't frozen.

At the moment of giving birth to a child, is the mother separate from the child? You should study not only that you become a mother when your child is born, but also that you become a child.

To forget the self is to remember that we don't exist alone, but in relation to other people, to other creatures, to the planet, and to the universe.

[F]ocus not on ourselves as a force in charge of the manipulation of others, but on how our lives interpenetrate those of others – and … all creatures of a dynamic universe.

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.

People get stuck a lot because they're afraid to act; in the worst case,...we get so attached to some end result that we can't function. We need help just to move on, only life doesn't wait.

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.

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

There's no rule in the end, but only the situation and the inclination of your mind

When we attach to a problem, we make the problem worse. When we attach to a solution, we make the problem worse.