Quotes About Zen

In their attempts to date Zen Buddhism's official debut in America, many historians follow the lead of Rick Fields and cite the significance of the 1893 World Parliament of Religions in Chicago; others point to the subsequent arrival of a particular teacher. The undisputed fact is that it was not here until the twentieth century, and it was not able to flourish until a monastery was established at Tassajara in 1967.

When Japanese Zen monks began to marry in the nineteenth century (and almost all of them are married today), they gave up the defining practice of monasticism—celibacy, aloneness. But they refused to turn in their costumes or close their theaters. Instead, they altered the forms.

The same effect can be achieved in different ways, either through perfecting a severe mental discipline as in Yoga or through cultivating constant spontaneity as in Zen. But the intended result is identical: to free inner life from the threat of chaos, on the one hand, and from the rigid conditioning of biological urges, on the other, and hence to become independent from the social controls that exploit both.

a yogi disciplines his mind to ignore pain that ordinary people would have no choice but to let into their awareness; similarly he can ignore the insistent claims of hunger or sexual arousal that most people would be helpless to resist. The same effect can be achieved in different ways, either through perfecting a severe mental discipline as in Yoga or through cultivating constant spontaneity as in Zen.

What is it like to feel Tao? It is an effortless flowing, a sweeping momentum.

A good stance and posture reflect a proper state of mind

Don't think about mistakes you've made in the past. Don't worry about what might happen in the future if this goes wrong. When your blade cuts into the skin, just think about now.

All worries and troubles have gone from my breast and I play joyfully far from the world. For a person of Zen, no limits exist. The blue sky must feel ashamed to be so small." Muso Soseki

From Zen meditation, ignorant scientists and atheists were born. The same people who claim to examine and experiment everything, came to believe that EVERYTHING started from NOTHING.

What writing practice, like Zen practice does is bring you back to the natural state of mind…The mind is raw, full of energy, alive and hungry. It does not think in the way we were brought up to think-well-mannered, congenial.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

One never read of Zen masters being taken in by scams. They didn't crave anything, and, therefore, con artists couldn't set the hook.

Pure Land faith leads to pure hell. Zen is the ideology of demons. Ritsu is an alien conspiracy. Shingon is sedition.

On a stop over at Hong Kong airport heading home we phoned the Hipgnosis studio to brief Storm on the cover design for Meddle. The title had been hastily concocted and, maybe inspired by some Zen-like image of water gardens, we told Storm we wanted 'an ear under water'. Time differences meant that neither party was on top form for the telephone discussion, but even across the intervening miles, we could hear the sound of Storm's eyes rolling.

Therese lifted her shoulders, losing that zen poise as nasty reality intruded on her nice, clean, middle-class understanding.

There is a bit of a scrum at the salad stall as fifteen Guardian readers all try to get at the wild rocket at once. We might have a Zen-like appreciation of a single, perfect organic onion, but it makes us no less capable of elbowing a fellow shopper in the ribs when we have to. This is food after all, and we are happy to fight for it if needs be.

In a Zen retreat we have a format for working with these quicksilver changes: we sit with them, we pay attention to them... Being steady with mindfulness as an anchor for all the changes we go through is the way we practice forbearance. And you can employ this same method anywhere anytime: just pay close attention to the details of what is going on internally and externally. Don't flinch, don't run away. Trust what happens. Take your stand there." (71)

Psychoanalysis and Zen, in my private psychic geometry, are equal to nicotine. They are anti-existential. Nicotine quarantines one out of existence.

One master defines Zen as the art of feeling the polar star in the southern sky. Truth can be reached only through the comprehension of opposites.

The Taoist and Zen conception of perfection... the dynamic nature of their philosophy laid more stress upon the process through which perfection was sought than upon perfection itself. True beauty could be discovered only by one who mentally completed the incomplete. The virility of life and art lay in its possibilities for growth.

The eternity of "anytime" shines in this moment "now" while the unlimitedness of "anyplace" is manifested in the limits of "here." When the universality of "anyone" dances out in the individual "I," for the first time you have the world of Zen.

Suzuki Shosan writes in his Roankyo the following passages, some of which have been quoted before: In training in Zen in recent years many people seem to have forgotten that Zen includes a great spirit of bravery and great strength. Therefore, those who train in Zen become tender-hearted, admirable-looking, desireless, and good-natured, but somehow they become divested of the will to respond to any unfavorable stimuli angrily enough to say, "Damn it!

Master Hakuin emphasizes kufu in movement or practical training in Zen. He says, "To practice Zen in movement is superior to doing so in the stillness of meditation.

In disciplining ourselves to practice Zen in movement, we never cease to become mu with all our might or count the frequency of our respiration at all times and in all places just as we do when we are in meditation. Therefore, it is our ideal to train ourselves to attain immovability in movement. As I have been saying, however, even professional Zen monks cannot always practice Zen in movement except those endowed with the greatest capacities.