Quotes About Zen

Zen would have our perception of the world, indeed our very thoughts, be nonverbal.

revised them to suit Zen purposes.

According to Ch'an (and Zen), understanding comes only by ignoring the intellect and heeding the instincts, the intuition.

Perhaps the most noticeable principle of Zen art is its asymmetry; we search in vain for straight lines, even numbers, round circles. Furthermore, nothing ever seems to be centered. Our first impulse is to go into the work and straighten things up—which is precisely the effect the artist intended.

Zen art makes one aware of the work of art itself.

I'm very good at blocking out noise.

1. A Cup of Tea Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), recieved a university professor who came to inqure about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he could no longer restrain himself. It is overfull. No more will go in! Like this cup, Nan-in said, you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your up?

9. The Moon Cannot Be Stolen Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of the mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing in it to steal. Ryokan returned and caught him. You may have come a long way to visit me, he told the prowler, and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift. Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. Poor fellow, he mused, I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.

Because mountains are high and broad, the way of riding the clouds is always reached in the mountains; the inconceivable power of soaring in the wind comes freely from the mountains

who can express the state of having already attained the ineffable?

Tenzo Ky?kun, or as I have entitled it in English, Instructions for the Zen Cook, was written over a period of years by Eihei D?gen Zenji (1200–1253), who was intimately familiar with both the Rinzai and S?t? schools of Zen, and finally completed in 1237. More specifically, it was written for D?gen's immediate disciples living with him in a monastery in medieval Japan.

jijuy?-zammai, or zazen

shikan-taza (just doing zazen)

Sawaki R?shi also used to say frequently, "Just sit?that's all there is," and "No matter how many years you sit doing zazen, you will never become anything special.

Sh?b?-genz?: Genj? K?an (Actualizing the Koan):

A Zen master's life is one continuous mistake.

Keep your mouth shut and look directly at impermanence!

Zazen doesn't give you something—it's the complete opposite!

Vegetarianism and Zen Buddhism, meditation and spirituality, acid and rock—Jobs rolled together, in an amped-up way, the multiple impulses that were hallmarks of the enlightenment-seeking campus subculture of the era.

Fans inside computers were not Zen-like; they distracted.

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki, Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, and Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chögyam Trungpa. They

Steve Jobs's attitude toward wealth was complex. He was an antimaterialistic hippie who capitalized on the inventions of a friend who wanted to give them away for free, and he was a Zen devotee who made a pilgrimage to India and then decided that his calling was to create a business. And yet somehow these attitudes seemed to weave together rather than conflict.

Buddhism, was not just some passing fancy or youthful dabbling. He embraced it with his typical intensity, and it became deeply ingrained in his personality. "Steve is very much Zen," said Kottke. "It was a deep influence. You see it in his whole approach of stark, minimalist aesthetics, intense

tangerine clam, and a professional desktop computer that suggested a Zen ice cube. Like bell-bottoms that turn up in the