A Quote by Frederick Lenz

What is Tantric Zen? Well, I don't think I can give you a straight answer, since I don't happen to be a very straight Zen master.

Frederick Lenz

Quote Topics

Answer Give Happen Master Since Straight Think Very Well Zen Zen Master

Quote Author

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

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

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

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

Tantric Zen, at first, does not appear to have a method. In Tantric Zen, you could meditate on a Brillo box or you could meditate on the clear light of reality.

Frederick Lenz

If I am asked If I am asked, then, what Zen teaches, I would answer, Zen teaches nothing. Whatever teachings there are in Zen, they come out of one's own mind. We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.

D.T. Suzuki

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

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

In the advanced practice, the relationship between the Zen master and the student becomes very terse. The Zen master will expect things of the student because the student is in graduate school.

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

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

Tantric Zen is all about the practice of zazen meditation. If you meditate well, you'll be in very powerful states of mind and then it really doesn't matter what you do.

Frederick Lenz

Zen is Tantric Buddhism, Vajrayana is tantric Buddhism - these are various forms of it. Tantric Buddhism simply means cutting to the chase.

Frederick Lenz

A Zen master is someone whose life is one with enlightenment and self-discovery. They can never be separated from that. They've been essentially mastered by Zen.

Frederick Lenz

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.