Top 1200 Zen Like Quotes & Sayings - Page 4

The beauty of Zen is found in simplicity and tranquility, in a sense of the all-embracing harmony of things.

When I was working at Omega, I took this Zen retreat, where you're quiet, you don't say anything for a week, and this guy there said, "You're going to be enlightened at the end of this week, that's my goal." I was the engineer, so I was recording everything at it was happening, but I was also participating, because I felt like it. So at the end of it, I did understand what enlightenment was, one-hundred percent.

Zen is meditation, the actual experience of life directly, immediately with no buffers.

Zen has no secrets other than seriously thinking about life and death.

I have sort of a Zen body philosophy, I'm sort of like: we're one weight one day, we're one weight another day, and some day our body just doesn't even exist at all! It's just a vessel I've been given to move through this life. I think about my body as a tool to do the stuff I need to do, but not the be all and end all of my existence. Which sounds like I spent a week at a meditation retreat, but it's genuinely how I feel.

The practice of Zen is forgetting the self in the act of uniting with something.

Well, for one thing, in the tradition of Zen that I've practiced, there is no prayerful worship and there is no affirmation of a deity.

A zen couch potato is a person who contemplates the nature of televised existence.

When mind and action are separate, zen is lost. We keep the two in sync by paying attention.

Naturally, the Zen Master Rama philosophy is to have a high state of awareness and material success.

Any good athletic is always in a state of perpetual training, as is the Zen student.

We can see unmistakeably that there is an inner relationship between Zen and the warrior's life.

The only zen thoughts you can find on a mountain summit are those you brought yourself.

I have a bit of a struggle with some aspects of or forms of Buddhism, but Zen I find to be mainly congenial.

I read a lot of Zen books. And I grew up surfing, so that has always been my escape.

The real Zen of the old Chinese masters was wu-shih, or "no fuss."

My feeling or philosophy is closer to Taoism and Zen Buddhism, 'cause it's the most practical.

I am a very spiritual person: I could say a Catholic with a strong underpinning of Zen.

An old Zen rule of thumb is not to answer until one has been asked three times.

I learned that you can stand up for yourself and still maintain your zen!

The whole point of Zen is to suspend the rules we have superimposed on things and to see the world as it is

If you're very, very conservative and you like that sort of practice, go find a very conservative Zen master and just do traditional Japanese practice, which is not that traditional actually.

At my Rolling Stones' tour, the camera was a protection. I used it in a Zen way.

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.

In Tantric Zen you can be humorous and make fun of anything or you can be very serious.

In Tantric Zen there is no rule. There is only your immediate experience.

Zen provides a structure that supports our exploring the practice and the teachings for ourselves.

The light is already there. In Zen Buddhism there's a little speck of dust on the mirror, and that's us.

Zen is a way of liberation, concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous, but what is.

The Zen master walks in his garden, alone. There is no traffic there. There is no shopping there. There are only the flowers.

Just like there are different roads that lead to different places, so there are different levels of awareness that lead to different places and we shift in and out of them. These are the ten thousand states of mind that we study in Zen.

There is a sense of competition in Zen. You are competing with your thoughts and trying to overcome them.

On these matters of specific fact, like is the mushroom an extraterrestrial and that sort of thing, I haven't the faintest idea. The mushroom itself is such a mercurial, elusive, Zen sort of personality that I never believe a word it says. I simply entertain its notions and try and sort through them, and I found that to be the most enriching approach to it.

For Zen students a weed is a treasure. With this attitude, whatever you do, life becomes an art.

Zen phrase says The instant you speak about a thing you miss the mark.

In Japanese art, space assumed a dominant role and its position was strengthened by Zen concepts.

Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.

Zen is a special transmission outside the Canonical Scriptures; it does not depend upon texts.

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

People who practice Zen correctly are not spaced-out or unrealistic. They are balanced and grounded.

Zen in it's essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one's being, and it points the way from bondage to freedom.

What writing practice, like Zen practice does is bring you back to the natural state of mind...The mind is raw, full of energy, alive and hungry. It does not think in the way we were brought up to think-well-mann ered, congenial.

A time of uncertainty, of not knowing exactly where we're headed, or what kind of choice to make is a Zen moment.

Whereas a lot of Buddhism concerns itself with stages of enlightenment, various precepts and moral codes, and even power structures and hierarchies, Zen is just like, 'Shut up, sit down, and observe your thoughts - oh, and by the way, what you perceive as you' doesn't actually exist.' I loved the minimalist approach of it.

HELLO! Look at me. HELLO! I am so ZEN. This is BLOOD. This is NOTHING. Hello. Everything is nothing, and it's so cool to be ENLIGHTENED. Like me.

This is what Zen means by being detached—not being without emotion or feeling, but being one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked, and through whom the experiences of the world pass like the reflections of birds flying over water.

I feel I'm pretty zen and laid back. I don't have a lot of rage in my real life.

I don't lack confidence. I don't sweat. I don't want to get too Zen on you, but I have to run my own race.

Zen values the simple, concrete, living facts of everyday direct personal experience.

Zen is a very quick path to enlightenment and development of the mind and all its facilities.

In life as well as in art Zen never wastes energy in stopping to explain; it only indicates.

Zen is based on the recognition of two incompatible types of thought: rational and intuitive.

There is a beautiful flow to the study of Zen. If it is not making you happier, then you are not practicing correctly.

When other sects speak well of Zen, the first thing that they praise is its poverty.

From the Zen view all beings are in the grip of the three poisons, greed, anger and delusion (ignorance).

There is no letter of the law to follow in Zen. There is a lot of etiquette, but there are no rules.

Zen is...joyous iconoclasm which respects nothing and no one, particularly itself.

Children are natural Zen masters; their world is brand new in each and every moment.

I didn't mean for you to take that the wrong way," He said abruptly. Mae stared at him in amazement. So, for that matter, did Jamie. "What?" "Demons don't touch anyone without a reason," Nick went on, his eyes shut again. "You can imagine what kind of reasons we usually have. I don't like--not anyone--I didn't mean anything by it." "Oh," said Jamie. "Oh, that's okay! That's fine. I understand. I am filled to the brim with understanding and, and acceptance! I'm very Zen like that.

Zen was an attempt to get back to the purest teachings of the Buddha -enlightenment without strings.