Quotes About Zen

The usefulness of a cup is its emptiness.

The stillness in stillness is not the real stillness; only when there is stillness in movement does the universal rhythm manifest.

The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.

Satori - in the awakening from a dream. Awakening and self-realization and seeing into one's own being - these are synonymous.

When the ultimate perfection is attained, the body and limbs perform by themselves what is assigned to them to do with no interference from the mind. The

The less effort you put in, the more powerful you will be.

Zen insists that the whole trouble is just our failure to realize that there is no problem.

What is true stillness? Stillness in movement.

Become empty to become complete, for it is the void that defines the form.

What is Zen? Simple, simple, so simple. Infinite gratitude toward all things past; infinite service to all things present; infinite responsibility to all things future.

I just had to stay cool. Zen. No punching in the face. Punching would not be Zen.

Zen is not interested in high-flown statements; it wants its pupil to bite his apple and not discuss it.

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.

On matters of transgression in the social sphere, Zen's deficiencies cannot be blamed on an indifferent or unresponsive attitude, for in some cases it has been actively pursuing a reprehensible agenda. Perhaps part of the problem is Zen's apparent lack of a sense of good versus evil on a metaphysical level in stressing that all phenomena are interconnected and interpenetrating.

Zen is perhaps best known not so much for the negation of speech, which would represent an extreme view, but for inventing a creative new style of expression that uses language in unusual and ingenious fashions to surpass a reliance on everyday words and letters.

Once the tremendous literary productivity of Zen masters is acknowledged, the question remains whether their profusion of words and countless instances of contradictory and absurd utterances and gestures make any sense.

The situation in which a native spirit becomes more highly venerated than Buddhist gods by a S?t? temple supposedly dedicated to the practice of zazen, and yet still is recognized as having a malevolent potential requiring exorcism, becomes a focal point for rethinking the function of syncretism in Zen.

Zen discourse ranges from rejection to veneration with exorcistic trends never disappearing, and the haughty disdain for supernaturalism in some records coexists with full-scale syncretism that includes purification rites. This range in the levels of discourse of Japanese amalgamations offers many striking contrasts with the nonassimilative, intolerant interactions between Christianity and medieval European paganism.

Zen's failure to resist and renounce intolerance and militarism is ironically derivative of traditional principles when misunderstood or when applied, sometimes purposefully, in an inappropriate way.

Because Zen overturns good versus evil on the ideal level, it loses sight of the significance of problems involving good versus evil in the real realm, which are not adequately addressed due to a shirking of responsibility and lack of remorse for transgressions.

For those who care deeply about Zen and its place in Japan and the world, the challenge is to help define Zen's role creatively lest the tradition get buried under the avalanche of criticism.

For me, mental toughness is the ability to stay focussed in the present irrespective of what is happening at the match.

I play my best football when I'm calm mentally.

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