Top 1200 Zen Life Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

Zen is poetry; poetry is Zen.

I had been reading this book about Zen Koan philosophy, and it was talking about the right here and the right now, and how important it is, and I was really trying to get there in my life.

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.

Zen, in its essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one's own being, and it points the way from bondage to freedom. By making us drink right from the fountain of life it liberates us from all the yokes under which we finite beings are usually suffering in this world.

Zen teaches that our approach to today determines our whole approach to life.

Laughter. Yes, laughter is the Zen attitude towards death and towards life too, because life and death are not separate. Whatsoever is your attitude towards life will be your attitude towards death, because death comes as the ultimate flowering of life. Life exists for death. Life exists through death. Without death there will be no life at all. Death is not the end but the culmination, the crescendo. Death is not the enemy it is the friend. It makes life possible.

I felt I was drawing close to that age, that place in life, where you realize one day what you'd told yourself was a Zen detachment turns out to be naked fear. You'd had one serious love relationship in your life and it had ended in tragedy, and the tragedy had broken something inside you. But instead of trying to repair the broken place, or at least really stop and look at it, you skated and joked. You had friends, you were a decent citizen. You hurt no one. And your life was somehow just about half of what it could be.

I have developed a Zen-like approach to the operating systems that people use: 'When you're ready, the right operating system will appear in your life.

For Zen students, a weed is a treasure.

If you say you had a zen moment, you already didn't.

I have more things going on right now than I can actually do without the invention of a cloning device. It is great! But it does give me many opportunities to practice trying to learn the lesson of being more Zen. I tend to worry about each "emergency" or unforeseen complication on all my projects. But there are so many! All of life is unforeseen! So I am learning that is the cycle of life - everything is cyclical and temporary and to get ok with that someday could be my greatest achievement.

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.

Be calm. Be Zen. You are Buddha.

Mourning doesn't always mean zen, mourning doesn't always mean somber, mourning can just be a celebration of a life of people. It's not always about wearing black and listening to a Sarah McLachlan song.

Tantric Zen is a state of mind

Zen is discipline - the discipline of living life, the discipline of taking a breath, the discipline of not knowing and not trying to know.

Zen is the unsymbolization of the world.

The key is to be Zen-like and be happy with what one has.

There's a Zen to acting, by being in the moment. That's where the power is.

Zen is just a lifestyle, your everyday life. It is doing your best at your job, relationships, health, hobbies, and other daily activities!

Zen, like life, defies exact definition, but its essence is the experience, moment by moment, of our own existence -- a natural, spontaneous encounter, unclouded by the suppositions and expectations that come between us and reality. It is, if you like, a paring down of life until we see it as it really is, free from our illusions; it is merely a divestment of ourselves until we recognize our own true nature.

Anywhere which is in a forest, that's my zen place.

I have developed a Zen-like approach to the operating systems that people use: 'When you're ready, the right operating system will appear in your life.'

To practice Zen means to realize one's existence in the beauty and clarity of this present moment, rather than letting life unravel in useless daydreaming of the past and future.

This particular school of Zen has always considered itself the Marines of the spiritual world, so it has a kind of bias against conceptual thinking in favor of a very rigorous physical life.

Zen is not effort. Effort is tension, effort is work, effort is to achieve something. Zen is not something to achieve. You are already that. Just relax, relax so deeply that you become a revelation to yourself.

Here it is. My moment of zen.

Jared had his back to the wall, which Kami thought was a reflex when he was uncomfortable. She wanted to shield him. “He was doing some—Zen jogging,” she claimed. Jared flicked her an incredulous glance. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Zen jogging. I wasn’t wearing that many clothes because—that’s part of the process. You’re meant to commune with the elements. Normally, I wouldn’t have worn my jeans, but I put them on because I know the English are a modest people.

Walking is Zen, sitting is Zen. Then what will be the quality? Watchfully alert, joyously unmotivated, centered, loving, flowing, one walks. And the walking is sauntering. Loving, alert, watchful, one sits, unmotivated - not sitting for anything in particular, just enjoying how beautiful just sitting doing nothing is, how relaxing, how restful.

A true Zen saying: "Nothing is what I want.

Zen's 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.

The central benefit of Zen, in the context of ordinary ups and downs of life,is not in preventing the minus and promoting the plus,but in directing people to the fundamental reality that is not under the sway of ups and downs.

To Zen, time and eternity are one.

Most people put the cart before the horse, which is an interesting way to go through life. They approach everything directly. In Zen we approach everything backwards or inside out.

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.

Zen aims at freedom but its practice is disciplined.

In Zen we have no gurus.

Zen is the vehicle of reality.

Cooking is one of the most zen things - you have to be there.

Zen has no business with ideas.

Old Zen was the reduction of concepts to absurdity.

There is really only one Zen Master ... and that's yourself.

What is perfect? From the Zen mind, perfection is not being there.

Zen takes the opposite tack; it holds that true reality is the fundamental unity of mind and matter, inner spirit and external world. When life is viewed in such terms, there can be no success or failure, happiness or unhappiness; life is a whole, and you are simply part of it. There are no dualities, hence there is nothing to worry about. The result is perfect tranquility.

Until today, it really pissed me off that I'd become this totally centered Zen Master and nobody had noticed. Still, I'm doing the little FAX thing. I write little HAIKU things and FAX them around to everyone. When I pass people in the hall at work, I get totally ZEN right in everyone's hostile little FACE.

The practice of Zen mind is beginner's mind. The innocence of the first inquiry—what am I?—is needed throughout Zen practice. The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities. It is the kind of mind which can see things as they are, which step by step and in a flash can realize the original nature of everything.

Well, I believe life is a Zen koan, that is, an unsolvable riddle. But the contemplation of that riddle - even though it cannot be solved - is, in itself, transformative. And if the contemplation is of high enough quality, you can merge with the divine.

Zen goes directly to your own experience of the oneness of the universe, of your interconnectedness with all things. You learn to distrust whatever you clung to in your old sense of separation, and that realization can be the most liberating thing in your life, a freedom beyond anything you could have imagined.

There is no need to have a deep understanding of Zen.

When a garden is used as a place to pause for thought, that is when a Zen garden comes to life. When you contemplate a garden like this it will form as lasting impression on your heart.

In Tantric Zen it doesn't matter but it does ... .

What are you, Zen Master Fang?

We take life for granted, sleepwalking until a shattering event knocks us awake. Zen says, don't wait until the car accident, the cancer diagnosis, or the death of a loved one to get your priorities straight. Do it now.

A Zen student asked his roshi the most important element of Zen.The roshi replied, "Attention." "Yes, thank you," the student replied. "But can you tell me the second most important element?"And the roshi replied, "Attention."

I could say I believe in every drop of rain that . . . Well, I believe life is a Zen koan, that is, an unsolvable riddle. But the contemplation of that riddle--even though it cannot be solved--is, in itself, transformative. And if the contemplation is of high enough quality, you can merge with the divine.

Regarding R. H. Blyth: Blyth's four volume Haiku became especially popular at this time [1950's] because his translations were based on the assumption that the haiku was the poetic expression of Zen. Not surprisingly, his books attracted the attention of the Beat school, most notably writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac, all of whom had a prior interest in Zen.

The most important part of the practice is for the question to remain alive and for your whole body and mind to become a question. In Zen they say that you have to ask with the pores of your skin and the marrow of your bones. A Zen saying points out: Great questioning, great awakening; little questioning, little awakening; no questioning, no awakening.

Real Freedom is to not feel limited when wearing this Zen robe, this troublesome formal robe. Similarly, in our busy life we should wear this civilization without being bothered by it, without ignoring it, without being caught by it.

Deluded beings think that if they get in a battle with a Zen Master or with a Don Juan, that it's going enhance their life if they win. You can never take power from someone else any more than you can take sunlight.

The purpose of Zen is the perfection of character.