Quotes About Zen

When I play my match, everything else is completely not in my mind anymore.

Enlightenment: Some Nothing from Which to Come

an open-plan cubicle kind of thing-working, doing something, writing some Lisp program. And he'd come shuffling in with his ceramic mug of beer, bare feet, and he'd just stand behind me. I'd say hi. And he'd grunt or say nothing. He'd just stand there watching me type. At some point I'd do something and he'd go, "Ptthh, wrong!" and he'd walk away. So that was kind of getting thrown in the deep end. It was like the Zen approach-the master hit me with a stick, now I must meditate.

It's kind of like a Zen thing. Like playing the piano, or being a centipede in Heaven.

If you meet the Buddha in the lane, feed him the ball.

There's a Zen saying I often cite that goes, "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water." The point: Stay focused on the task at hand rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future.

Suzuki had just finished giving a talk to a group of Zen students when someone in the audience said, "You've been talking about Buddhism for nearly an hour, and I haven't been able to understand a thing you said. Could you say one thing about Buddhism I can understand?" After the laughter died down, Suzuki replied calmly, "Everything changes.

When mind and action are separate, zen is lost.

When we put our keys down, we should be conscious of putting them down. When we pick them up, we should be conscious of picking them up. That's all there is to zen. The best way to remember where we put things is to have a place for them. As the saying does, "All things in their place, and a place for all things.

We needn't look any further ahead than today or commit to any more than taking one step. When we've taken one, we can commit to taking another. Pretty soon we've reached fifty. Pretty soon we've reached a hundred. Pretty soon we've reached zen.

When you're hurrying around too quickly," he had said, "there's a part of the world you can't see. If, for example, you're taking a wrong direction in your life, it's only when you stop and look at things clearly that you can revise your direction and take a more proper course. Then message of Zen is that in order to find ourselves, we've got to learn to stop.

Zen is what remains when words and ideas run out. · What we see and smell and hear is real, it reminds us; what we think about that is not. · In much the same spirit, the Japanese aesthetic is less about accumulation than subtraction, so that whatever remains is everything.

The ultimate purpose of Zen," I remembered the röshi telling me, "is not in the going away from the world but in the coming back. Zen is not just a matter of gaining enlightenment; it's a matter of acting in a world of love and compassion.

Screens in a Zen meditation place are pulled back at dusk, to let the mosquitoes in. · A monastery, for St. Benedict, was "a school for charity." A Zen temple might be called a school for clarity. The challenge in either tradition is to see how one leads to the other.

If you think, 'I breathe,' " said Shunryu Suzuki, the Zen teacher, "the 'I' is extra.

In sumi-e, he said, as in haiku aur in any Zen training, the aim was to develop a discipline so sure and a spirit so true that one could afford to be atleast spontaneous; to get into such a state of deliberateness that as soon as one put pen to paper, one would produce something powerful and true.

In sumi-e, he said, as in haiku or in any Zen training, the aim was to develop a discipline so sure and a spirit so true that one could afford to be atleast spontaneous; to get into such a state of deliberateness that as soon as one put pen to paper, one would produce something powerful and true.

In sumi-e, he said, as in haiku or in any Zen training, the aim was to develop a discipline so sure and a spirit so true that one could afford to be utterly spontaneous; to get into such a state of deliberateness that as soon as one put pen to paper, one would produce something powerful and true.

In shooting, you need to be dumb.

When I'm in the car, I want the only one shouting to be me.

A full mind is an empty bat.

I think if you think so much, you simply cannot bat.

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

The great lesson from the true mystics, from the Zen monks, and now also from the Humanistic and Transpersonal psychologists -that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's back yard, and that travel may be a flight from confronting the sacred- this lesson can be easily lost. To be looking elsewhere for miracles is to me a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous.