Quotes About Zen

The secret of Zen is just two words: not always so. —SHUNRYU SUZUKI ROSHI

Suzuki Roshi gave the instructions, 'sit still. Don't anticipate...

You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.

I try to get centered: Watching white moon face The stars never feel anger Blah, blah, blah, the end

Fluidity is the way to an empty mind. You must free your ambitious mind and learn the art of dying.

In Japanese art, space assumed a dominant role and its position was strengthened by Zen concepts.

To practice Zen or the Martial Arts, you must live intensely, wholeheartedly, without reserve - as if you might die in the next instant

The usefulness of the cup is its emptiness.

Zen is not some fancy, special art of living. Our teaching is just to live, always in reality, in its exact sense. To make our effort, moment after moment, is our way.

It's a horrible and wonderful battle with yourself, to stay calm, stay in the moment. My coach said, "Stay here, not at the target. Don't be down there." It's why they call it the Zen art.

I note how calm she looks and how focused she is. She is well-practiced in the art of losing herself. I can't say the same of myself.

Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance.

No matter what verbal space you try to enclose Zen in, it resists, and spills over... the Zen attitude is that words and truth are incompatible, or at least that no words can capture truth.

The whole zen attitude is to bring to your notice the fact that there is no effort to be made. The zen attitude is that of effortlessness.

This would be a Zen-like state of productivity, in which you deal with what's present from a perspective that is both detached and fully engaged.

The real, many-veiled answer to the question of just what goes through a great player's mind as he stands at the center of hostile crowd-noise and lines up the free-throw that will decide the game might well be: nothing at all.

He knew what the Beats know and what the great tennis player knows, son: learn to do nothing, with your whole head and body, and everything will be done by what's around you.

Tiene la paciencia de un escusado: ni habla, ni se mueve, ni reclama. Entiende que más tarde o más temprano le va a caer su mojón.

The aim of Zen practice is not to escape or transcend life's discomfort. Zen practice is about plunging into the mystery of daily life just as it is.

Drunk we lie down in empty hills,heaven and earth our quilt and pillow.

The birds have vanished into the sky and now the last cloud drains away. We sit together the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.

The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede.

Not until you succeed in being really flexible and soft, can you become really strong and forceful. —Zen Buddhist proverb

Always remember the beauty of the garden, for there is peace