Quotes About Zazen

Zazen's music is composed in other dimensions and it is played by some of my students. I go through the music they have played with my aura and wash out anything impure.

By perfecting the practices of zazen and mindfulness, by learning patience and love and by realizing the essential emptiness of all phenomena, you will discover nirvana.

The emphasis is on meditation in Tantric Zen. The experience of meditation in formal practice, zazen, where you're sitting down and meditating and concentrating.

As we said, Zen masters talk about Emptiness all the time! But they have a practice and a methodology (zazen) which allows them to discover the transcendental referent via their own developmental signified, and thus their words (the signifiers) remain grounded in experiential, reproducible, fallibilist criteria.

Zazen practice is the direct expression of our true nature. Strictly speaking, for a human being, there is no other practice than this practice; there is no other way of life than this way of life.

I was beginning to realize that zazen was not a cure-all. People who attain a certain degree of understanding of zazen begin to understand zazen, period. I had to remind myself not to expect Joko to be equipped to advise me how to live my life or to decide important ethical questions such as the proper stance of religion toward war.

Be moderate in eating and drinking. Mindful of the passing of time, engage yourself in zazen as though saving your head from fire.

Practicing zazen and mindfulness constantly and correctly, over a period of time, can bring strength and clarity to your finite mind and eventually give you access to your infinite mind.

When practicing shikantaza, we do nothing but sit with the whole body and mind. We do nothing with the mind, so this is not actually a meditation practice. In this zazen we don't practice with a mantra or contemplate anything. We don't count or watch the breath. We don't try to concentrate the mind on any particular object or use any other meditation techniques; we really just sit with both body and mind.

When you are practicing zazen, do not try to stop your thinking. Let it stop by itself. If something comes into your mind, let it come in, and let it go out. It will not stay long. When you try to stop your thinking, it means you are bothered by it. Do not be bothered by anything... if you are not bothered by the waves, gradually they will become calmer and calmer.

If you think you will get something from practicing zazen, already you are involved in impure practice.

Actually we do not have any particular name for our practice; when we practice zazen we just practice it, and whether we find joy in our practice or not, we just do it.

A mind full of preconceived ideas, subjective intentions, or habits is not open to things as they are. That is why we practice zazen: to clear our mind of what is related to something else.

Concentration is not to try hard to watch something... Concentration means freedom... In zazen practice we say your mind should be concentrated on your breathing, but the way to keep your mind on your breathing is to forget all about yourself and just to sit and feel your breathing.

Even when you practice zazen alone, without a teacher, I think you will find some way to tell whether your practice is adequate or not.

Usually when you practice zazen, you become very idealistic, and you set up an ideal or goal which you strive to attain and fulfill. But as I have often said, this is absurd. When you are idealistic, you have some gaining idea within yourself; by the time you attain your ideal or goal, your gaining idea will create another ideal.

Which is more important: to attain enlightenment, or to attain enlightenment before you attain enlightenment; to make a million dollars, or to enjoy your life in your effort, little by little, even though it is impossible to make that million; to be successful, or to find some meaning in your effort to be successful? If you do not know the answer, you will not even be able to practice zazen; if you do know, you will have found the true treasure of life.

Practice does not mean that whatever you do, even lying down, is zazen. When the restrictions you have do not limit you, this is what we mean by practice.

To be aware of the meaning of your life, you practice zazen.

In other restless positions you have no power to accept your difficulties, but in the zazen posture which you have acquired by long, hard practice, your mind and body have great power to accept things as they are, whether they are agreeable or disagreeable.

But as long as you think you are practicing zazen for the sake of something, that is not true practice.

When we practice zazen we just practice zazen, without any gaining idea. When we talk about something we just talk about something, ...without trying to express some intellectual, one-sided idea. And we listen without trying to figure or some intellectual understanding, without trying to understand from just a one-sided view.

Enlightenment is not some good feeling or some particular state of mind. The state of mind that exists when you sit in the right posture is, itself, enlightenment. If you cannot be satisfied with the state of mind you have in zazen, it means your mind is still wandering about. Our body and mind should not be wobbling or wandering about. In this posture there is no need to talk about the right state of mind. You already have it. This is the conclusion of Buddhism.

So when you practice zazen, your mind should be concentrated on your breathing. This kind of activity is the fundamental activity of the universal being. Without this experience, this practice, it is impossible to attain absolute freedom.