170 Quotes Tagged: zen

If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there's room to hear more subtle things - that's when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It's a discipline; you have to practice it.

[T]he important point is that a world of inter-dependent relationships, where things are intelligible only in terms of of each other, is a seamless unity. In such a world it is impossible to consider man apart from nature, as an exiled spirit which controls this world by having its roots in another. Man is himself a loop in the endless knot, and as he pulls in one direction he finds that he is pulled from another and cannot find the origin of the impulse.

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few

For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.

"Here's an example: someone says, "Master, please hand me the knife," and he hands them the knife, blade first. "Please give me the other end," he says. And the master replies, "What would you do with the other end?" This is answering an everyday matter in terms of the metaphysical.

When the question is, "Master, what is the fundamental principle of Buddhism?" Then he replies, "There is enough breeze in this fan to keep me cool." That is answering the metaphysical in terms of the everyday, and that is, more or less, the principle zen works on. The mundane and the sacred are one and the same."

Humility before the flower at the timber line is the gate which gives access to the path up the open fell.

In Zen Buddhist texts they say, “You cannot nail a peg into the sky.” And so, to be a man of the sky, a man of the void, is also called ‘a man not depending on anything’. And when you’re not hung on anything you are the only thing that isn’t hung on anything – which is the universe. Which doesn’t hang, you see. Where would it hang? It has no place to fall on, even though it may be dropping; there will never be the crash of it landing on a concrete floor somewhere. But the reason for that is that it won’t crash below because it doesn’t hang above. And so there is a poem, in Chinese, which speaks of such a person as having above, not a tile to cover the head; below, not an inch of ground on which to stand.

The brush must draw by itself. This cannot happen if one does not practice constantly. But neither can it happen if one makes an effort.

If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?

Long long years,
Yes, endlessly long years,
Being together face to face,
Never asking the moon the time to go.
向かいゐて
千代も八千代も
見てしがな
空行く月の
こと問はずとも

Taoism is a way of liberation, which never comes by means of revolution, since it is notorious that most revolutions establish worse tyrannies than they destroy.

Learning how to think' really means learning how to exercise some control over how & what you think. It means being conscious & aware enough to choose what you pay attention to & to choose how you construct meaning from experience.

We say concentration, but to concentrate your mind on something is not the true purpose of Zen. The true purpose is to see thing as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes. This is to put everything under control in its widest sense.

[S]ocial institutions are simply rules of communication which have no more universal validity than, say, the rules of a particular grammar.

Zen gives you tremendous dignity. There is no authority anywhere. Freedom is utter and ultimate.