Quotes About Zen

How do you explain a zen parable, how explain a mind-bendingly unconventional but logistically correct view of 'reality' in a story? I just try everything I can think up and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't

I'm either becoming Zen or more depressed, he thinks.

mihotoke ni / shini mukeoreba / tsuki suzushi4 I've turned my back On Buddha How cool the moon!

The world of dew is, yes, a world of dew, but even so

Japanese for simplicity and taking pleasure in imperfections

I don't think too far ahead of myself.

I don't really like filling my brain with a lot of stuff.

In a traditional Japanese or Chinese garden, it's not only about the building or temple but about the whole setup - the structure, the landscape, the light, the plants, the water. The whole experience that makes your life there so beautiful.

When your private life has been dragged into public space, you tend to attain a zen-like composure.

Zen is for poets, Tibetan is for artists, and Vipassana is for psychologists.

prefiero el ritual de la nada.

It may happen to me at any time that everything will be just what it is, with no stories in anything.

Zazen is better than a home. Zazen is a home that you can't ever lose.

Think not-thinking. How do you think not-thinking? Nonthinking. This is the essential art of zazen.

To study the self is to forget the self. Maybe if you sat enough zazen, your sense of being a solid, singular self would dissolve and you could forget about it. What a relief. You could just hang out happily as part of an open-ended quantum array.

In Zen we have a story. If your left hand gets a painful splinter, what does your right hand do? Does your right hand say, "Oh, that's too bad, but it's not my problem"? No, of course not. The right hand pulls the splinter out. This is interconnectedness.

In case you don't know, it's an old tradition among Zen masters to write a final poem on their deathbeds

Jiko also says that to do zazen is to enter time completely.

At every juncture—in every Zen moment when possibilities arise—a schism occurs, worlds branch, and multiplicity ensues. Every instance of either/or is replaced by an and. And an and, and an and, and an and, and another and . . . adding up to an infinitely all-inclusive, and yet mutually unknowable, web of many worlds.

Perhaps you have heard the Zen motto that says, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears"?

Shiki fu i ku, ku fu i shiki.70

I don't psyche myself up. I psyche myself down. I think clearer when I'm not psyched up.

In Zen the emphasis is on meditation and developing your body, mind and spirit to find inner peace, strength, clarity and enlightenment.

My key to dealing with stress is simple: just stay cool and stay focused.