A Quote by Frederick Lenz

In the old days, Zen was not really practiced so much in a monastery. The Zen Master usually lived up on a top of the mountain or the hill or in the forest or sometimes in the village.

Frederick Lenz

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Days Forest Hill Lived Master Monastery Mountain Much Old Old Days Practiced Really Sometimes Top Up Village Zen Zen Master

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Frederick Lenz
American - Author
February 9, 1950 - April 12, 1998

There are two primary ways of studying Zen. Either an individual will enter into a Zen monastery and study with a Zen master there, or they will study with a Zen master who lives in the contemporary world.

Frederick Lenz

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

Tantric Zen is for someone who is really broad-minded. It is Bodhidharma's Zen, your Zen, my Zen. Which doesn't mean I have a problem with Japanese Zen. Most Japanese Zen is minding your p's and q's.

Frederick Lenz

The Zen Master was constantly attempting to break up concepts that people had about what it was like to be a spiritual teacher. We have a traditional image. Each Zen master was a complete character.

Frederick Lenz

Now when I speak about Zen, I have a problem, in the sense that the Zen of today has lost the essence, in my estimation, of what I call "old Zen."

Frederick Lenz

The Zen master can see precisely what it will take to cause your awareness to become free. But the Zen master can't do it for you.

Frederick Lenz

And finally, be assured that Zen asks nothing even as it promises nothing. One can be a Protestant Zen Buddhist, a Catholic Zen Buddhist or a Jewish Zen Buddhist. Zen is a quiet thing. It listens.

Howard Fast

Zen purposes to discipline the mind itself, to make it its own master, through an insight into its proper nature. This getting into the real nature of one's own mind or soul is the fundamental object of Zen Buddhism. Zen, therefore, is more than meditation and Dhyana in its ordinary sense. The discipline of Zen consists in opening the mental eye in order to look into the very reason of existence.

D.T. Suzuki

To remain caught up in ideas and words about Zen is, as the old masters say, to stink of Zen.

Alan Watts

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

In Old Zen, the Zen Master would do literally anything to break down the concept of what the study was. He would present conflicting codes all the time, just to shake this fixation people had on how to attain liberation.

Frederick Lenz

Zen is the enemy of analysis, the friend of intuition. The Zen artist understands the ends of his art intuitively, and the last thing he would do is create categories; the avowed purpose of Zen is to eliminate categories! The true Zen-man holds to the old Taoist proverb, Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.

Tom Hoover

Zen is to religion what a Japanese "rock garden" is to a garden. Zen knows no god, no afterlife, no good and no evil, as the rock-garden knows no flowers, herbs or shrubs. It has no doctrine or holy writ: its teaching is transmitted mainly in the form of parables as ambiguous as the pebbles in the rock-garden which symbolise now a mountain, now a fleeting tiger. When a disciple asks "What is Zen?", the master's traditional answer is "Three pounds of flax" or "A decaying noodle" or "A toilet stick" or a whack on the pupil's head.

Arthur Koestler

I seemed to recall some words from an old Zen master, something like, "My Zen cuts down mountains." My rejection of Buddhism was a cutting down of mountains; that is precisely how it felt to me.

Quentin S. Crisp

The true "Way" cannot be used to look into the heart of another, and can only be appreciated and found on one's own. What others say is but "oral Zen" - Zen not practiced but simply preached or talked about.

Henry Chang

Tantric Zen is the original Zen, Zen without rules, Zen without form. Zen can certainly take rules and form. So Tantric Zen might have some rules and form, but it would remain formless even though it had rules and form.

Frederick Lenz

A Quote by Frederick Lenz

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