Quotes About Zen

Like a Zen question: If you put on a show, and nobody comes, have you in fact put on a show at all?

It takes a lot of physical and spiritual energy to balance on one wheel. Seen?

Zen... does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

Our way is to practice one step at a time, one breath at a time, with no gaining idea.

Golf is a spiritual game. It's like Zen. You have to let your mind take over.

Do nothing, and leave nothing undone. ["Doing nothing" is what happens when the doer disappears, it isn't something that one does or chooses not to do.]

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.

The Zen Master was constantly attempting to break up concepts that people had about what it was like to be a spiritual teacher. We have a traditional image. Each Zen master was a complete character.

Every great player has learned the two Cs: how to concentrate and how to maintain composure.

Concentration is the ability to think about absolutely nothing when it is absolutely necessary.

Sports and athletics can be a path in Zen, in concordance with daily practice of zazen meditation. You need to move with your spirit, not just with your body.

Do not strive to seek after the true," writes a Zen master, "only cease to cherish opinions.

integral sayings of Zen Buddhism is, 'Do the best you can and then walk on.

In Zen training the hungry ghost realm ... presents as the attempt to "get" emptiness. "I needed so much to have nothing to touch," sings Leonard Cohen, "I've always been greedy this way.

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

Not to be bound by rules, but to be creating one's own rules-this is the kind of life which Zen is trying to have us live.

The real goal of Zen is to find a way of life that's easy and undramatic. Strong attachments lead to upset and drama.

Life without zazen is like winding your clock without setting it. It runs perfectly well, but it dosen't tell time.

Zazen practice and everyday activity are one thing. We call zazen everyday life, and everyday life zazen.

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

Zen is the way of complete self-realization; a living human being who follows the way of Zen can attain satori and then live a new life as a Buddha.

Zen approaches it from the practical side of life-that is, to work out Enlightenment in life itself.

So I've held on to Catholicism or Zen, as practices, as fantasy futures, as possible identities. But when I actually dare to lower myself down into this emptiness—no, that sounds entirely too dualistic and willful and "courageous"—but when this seeing suddenly happens and thought relaxes, Zen drops completely away, and something much deeper is contacted, some entirely other way of being.

For some people, being a Zen monk is the perfect expression. For others, drinking beer and calling meditation hogwash is the perfect expression. Some teachers will tell you to sweep the floor mindfully, and others will tell you that your mindful sweeping is only a dream. Life is wonderfully playful and diverse.