73 quotes found
“Not being tense but ready.Not thinking but not dreaming.Not being set but flexible.Liberation from the uneasy sense of confinement.It is being wholly and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for w...”
“...it's like this. Sometimes, when you've a very long street ahead of you, you think how terribly long it is and feel sure you'll never get it swept. And then you start to hurry. You work faster an...”
“It's like you took a bottle of ink and you threw it at a wall. Smash! And all that ink spread. And in the middle, it's dense, isn't it? And as it gets out on the edge, the little droplets get finer...”
“It is a wretched thing that the young men of today are so contriving and so proud of their material posessions. Men with contriving hearts are lacking in duty. Lacking in duty, they will have no se...”
“Until today, it really pissed me off that I'd become this totally centered Zen Master, and nobody had noticed. Still, i'm doing the little FAX thing. I write little HAIKU things and FAX them around...”
“Earth, mountains, rivers, hidden in this nothingness.In this nothingness, earth, mountains, rivers revealed.Spring flowers, winter snows.There's no being or non-being, nor denial itself.”
“The point of the spiritual life is to realize Truth. But you will never understand the spiritual life, or realize Truth, if you measure it by your own yardstick.”
“Do not seek for the truth, only stop having an opinion.”
“The importance and unimportance of the self cannot be exaggerated.”
“Once Seung Sahn Soen-sa and a student of his attended a talk at a Zen center in California. The Dharma teacher spoke about Bodhidharma. After the talk, someone asked him "What's the difference betw...”
“Nothing divides one so much as thought.”
“I'm a practicing Zen Buddhist and I'm influenced by my readings in that tradition, such as the notion that everyone is born a perfect being and we spend most of our lives with a clouded vision tryi...”
“In our practice we have no particular purpose or goal, nor any special object of worship.”
“Hard to restrain, unstable is this mind; it flits wherever it lists. Good it is to control the mind. A controlled mind brings happiness.”
“Zen probably wont solve a single one of our problems. What it might do is help us relate differently to what we consider problems.”
“When we attach to a problem, we make the problem worse. When we attach to a solution, we make the problem worse.”
“You worry yourself unnecessarily. Put the thought of hitting right out of your mind!”
“...being able to wait without purpose in the state of highest tension...without continually asking yourself: Shall I be able to manage it? Wait patiently, as see what comes - and how it comes!”
“... the Master's warning that we should not practice anything except self-detaching immersion.”
“Zen is a double-edged sword, killing words and thoughts, yet at the same time, giving them life. Although beyond human intellect and philosophy, Zen is their root and source.”
