Top 1130 Zen Buddhist Quotes & Sayings

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.

Different schools of Zen have evolved, principally the Rinzai and Soto orders. A whole hierarchy has developed for the teaching and practice of Zen. Zen has become, to a certain degree, institutionalized.

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.

To these Teachers of Zen; you want a zafu cushion? sit your zen ass on a bicycle seat and peddle into hurricane wind for 8 hours at your max effort; there is your ENGAGED ZEN!

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.

What I term Zen, old Zen, the original face of Zen, new Zen, pure Zen, or Tantric Zen is - Zen in its essence.

I'm not really hip to too much of the Zen or the Buddhist point of view, but you see I don't have to be because I just know that they're all the same, it's all the same, it's just whichever one you want to take and it happens that I'm taking the Hindu one.

From my own personal encounters and studies with both Tantric and Zen Buddhist monks, I have found them to be humorous, warm, charming, and compassionate.

Zen is really extraordinarily simple as long as one doesn't try to be cute about it or beat around the bush! Zen is simply the sensation and the clear understanding ... that there is behind the multiplicity of events and creatures in this universe simply one energy -- and it appears as you, and everything is it. The practice of Zen is to understand that one energy so as to "feel it in your bones.

My dad was a Buddhist when I was young, so when I was begging to become a Catholic, he was saying no and imparting Buddhist precepts.

Apart from the underlying mystery of all things, there is also another possible specific mystery in this situation: Why did I become so interested in Buddhism, Zen and so on? I seem to have a Buddhist voice in my head, and someone asked me about this recently, saying he was intrigued.

According to Zen Buddhist cosmology there are ten thousand different states of mind to view and understand life through.

There is a director who should make 'Silver Surfer' - he is mentally committed to it. He's doing another movie now. What's most important to me about this guy, first, is that he's incredible with visuals. But he's also a spiritual guy, a Zen Buddhist. ... Galactus is a force of nature, not a being. That's all I'm saying.

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

My dad was a Buddhist when I was young. So, at a point when I begging become Catholic he was saying "no" and imparting Buddhist precepts.

You grow, learn, and the more I can sit in silence and be comfortable with myself, the more I can make noise, as ironic and Zen Buddhist and satanic as it sounds!

At times, Zen does get into some Buddhist Cosmology. Nishijima Roshi, my main teacher would talk about that and almost every time immediately say that it was only one way of looking at it. Whenever addressing realms of Heaven or Hell, he'd also address that it was just a psychological state.

If anything, I label myself as sort of Buddhist. My wife Jane is Buddhist.

At least half of your mind is always thinking, I'll be leaving; this won't last. It's a good Buddhist attitude. If I were a Buddhist, this would be a great help. As it is, I'm just sad.

To be a good Zen Buddhist it is not enough to follow the teaching of its founder; we have to experience the Buddha's experience.

I came to California in 1970 and so many people were asking if I was a Buddhist or knew Zen theory, asking if I was enlightened already or not. So I said, "Yes, I am enlightened," and then I studied quickly to catch up.

Just studying Buddhism, then meditating and going to Buddhist monasteries, talking to Buddhist monks, combined with the Thai people themselves, changed the way I look at the world.

Zen and Buddhism have produced martial arts, because of the Buddhist injunction against weapons.

I'm much more Buddhist. I mean, I'm not a Buddhist. I should be so lucky to be a Buddhist, a real Buddhist, but of all the things I investigated, that seems to make the most sense to me.

To an experienced Zen Buddhist, asking if one believes in Zen or one believes in the Buddha, sounds a little ludicrous, like asking if one believes in air or water. Similarly Quality is not something you believe in, Quality is something you experience.

The great achievement of Zen Buddhism, and all of its cultural expressions in painting or the tea ceremony or rock gardens, is a rejection of earlier Buddhist ideas which were dependent upon narrative - all the mythological creatures that populate the Buddhist galaxy. Zen insisted on the real located in nature.

Bodhidharma who brought Zen from India to the Orient, taught a very pure Zen - in that it was pure Zen. He wanted to show that the way still existed and wanted to get back to its essence.

I snap at people I love all the time, and that makes me feel bad about myself. I want to be Zen. I am so not Zen. Whatever Zen is, I'm the opposite of it.

But for the first time, I had a religious identity. I had come home. And so I called myself a Zen Buddhist at the age of 18.

Laos is a deeply Buddhist country, and my visit included a traditional Tak Bat ceremony, in which you get up at sunrise and make offerings to Buddhist monks.

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi or zen. Not any religion or cultural system. I am not of the East, nor of the West.... My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless.

The three elements of creativity are thus: loving, knowing, and doing - or heart, mind, and hands - or, as Zen Buddhist teaching has it; great faith, great question, and great courage.

The Buddha would not have liked people to call themselves Buddhist. To him that would have been a fundamental error because there are no fixed identities. He would have thought that someone calling himself a Buddhist has too much invested in calling himself a Buddhist.

Bodhisattva is enlightened in the Buddhist philosophy, religion, tradition. He's enlightened. It's fine - I don't really fight it - but many people use the term 'zen' and terms like 'nirvana,' 'enlightenment' in an almost superficial way. It's not that complicated.

When I say that Zen is life, I mean that Zen is not to be confined within conceptualization, that Zen is what makes conceptualization possible.

Zen abhors repetition or imitation of any kind, for it kills. For the same reason Zen never explains, but only affirms. Life is fact and no explanation is necessary or pertinent. To explain is to apologize, and why should we apologize for living? To live—is that not enough? Let us then live, let us affirm! Herein lies Zen in all its purity and in all its nudity as well.

Meryl Streep is expert at only using the requisite amount of energy to express her character, not an ounce too little or too much. She's Zen and doesn't know she's Zen. That's very Zen!

I never thought much about God, certainly never wondered whether God was thinking about me, until I fell in love with a Zen Buddhist priest.

The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the most beloved Buddhist teachers in the West, a rare combination of mystic, poet, scholar, and activist. His luminous presence and the simple, compassionate clarity of his writings have touched countless lives.

The theory of Zen is non-competition. But that is not really true at all. People who practice Zen are very competitive. They are competing against emptiness.

Facts of experience are valued in Zen more than representations, symbols, and concepts-that is to say, substance is everything in Zen and form nothing.

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.

There's something Zen-like about the way I work - it's like raking gravel in a Zen Buddhist garden.

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.

My ethics, my sense of morality, my work ethic, my sense of compassion for suffering humanity, all of that comes directly out of the practice of poetry, as does my Buddhist practice. Poetry is a very important element in the history of Buddhism in general and in Zen in particular. It was really Zen that motivated me to change the way I perceive the world.

Zen is the spirit of a man. Zen believes in his inner purity and goodness. Whatever is superadded or violently torn away, injures the wholesomeness of the spirit. Zen, therefore, is emphatically against all religious conventionalism.

In the early '60s there was very little reliable information on Tibetan Buddhism. I was living in London and I had joined the Buddhist Society. For the most part, people there were either interested in Theravada or Zen Buddhism. There was almost no one into Tibetan Buddhism at that time.

The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

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."

Zen Makes use, to a great extent, of poetical expressions; Zen is wedded to poetry.

Today, I regularly attend two Buddhist organizations, the Zen Center of Los Angeles and Against the Stream, but I also attend certain Christian functions. I try to cultivate a generous, kind spirit and am open to anything to help get me there.

As we grow up, we're constantly defining ourselves. In my case: Caucasian, male, born in Iowa, live in Boston, Zen Buddhist, good at learning languages. With countless labels, I build up this creation I call my self.

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.

Zen is the study of mind in all of its manifestations. The purpose of Zen is to be happy.

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.

To say one is revolutionary is a little like saying one is a Zen Buddhist - if you say you are, you probably aren't.

Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.

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.

Zen is a very quick path. Zen is the path of meditation. The word Zen means emptiness or fullness, meditation. Meditation is the quickest path to enlightenment.