The Way Of Zen Quotes
"To be unconscious of one’s feet implies that the shoes are easy. To be unconscious of a waist implies that the girdle is easy."
"The intelligence being unconscious of positive and negative implies that the heart (hsin) is at ease."
"The vulgar are bright, and I alone seem to be dull."
"People in general are so happy, as if enjoying a feast, or as going up a tower in spring."
"All creatures are one fourth of him, three-fourths eternal life in heaven."
"The baby looks at things all day without winking; that is because his eyes are not focussed on any particular object."
"When the superior man hears of the Tao, he does his best to practice it."
"He loves and nourishes all things, but does not lord it over them."
"The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing; it refuses nothing."
"There is one thing: above, it supports Heaven; below, it upholds Earth."
"The perfect Tao is without difficulty, Save that it avoids picking and choosing."
"If your thoughts are tied you spoil what is genuine."
"Don't be antagonistic to the world of the senses, For when you are not antagonistic to it, It turns out to be the same as complete Awakening."
"The wise person does not strive (wu-wei); The ignorant man ties himself up."
"If you work on your mind with your mind, How can you avoid an immense confusion?"
"The body is the Bodhi Tree; The mind like a bright mirror standing. Take care to wipe it all the time, And allow no dust to cling."
"There never was a Bodhi Tree, Nor bright mirror standing. Fundamentally, not one thing exists, So where is the dust to cling?"
"Past things are in the past and do not go there from the present, and present things are in the present, and do not go there from the past."
"Rivers which compete with one another to inundate the land do not flow. The 'wandering air' that blows about is not moving."
"The sun and moon, revolving in their orbits, do not turn around."
"A man with an empty consciousness is no better than a block of wood or a lump of stone."
"Our own nature is fundamentally clear and pure."
"The true mind is 'no-mind' (wu-hsin), which is to say that it is not to be regarded as an object of thought or action."
"To try to purify the mind is to be contaminated with purity."
"Letting go of the mind is also equivalent to letting go of the series of thoughts and impressions."
"Through the use of wisdom, there is no blockage. This is the samadhi of prajna, and natural liberation."
"To concentrate on the mind and to contemplate it until it is still is a disease and not dhyana."
"True dhyana is to realize that one’s own nature is like space."
"The true practice of Zen is no practice, that is, the seeming paradox of being a Buddha without intending to be a Buddha."
"All cultivation of concentration is wrong-minded from the start."
"Zen is a medicine for the ill effects of conditioning, for the mental paralysis and anxiety which come from excessive self-consciousness."
"Zen does not seek to overthrow the conventions themselves, but takes them for granted."
"Social conditioning fosters the identification of the mind with a fixed idea of itself as the means of self-control."
"I find myself totally incapable of any mental action which is not intentional, affected, and insincere."
"I cannot be intentionally unintentional or purposely spontaneous."
"As soon as it becomes important for me to be spontaneous, the intention to be so is strengthened."
"In this moment the whole quality of consciousness is changed, and I feel myself in a new world."
"The discovery that both the voluntary and involuntary aspects of the mind are alike spontaneous makes an immediate end of the fixed dualism."
"Zen annihilates the concept by showing that it is as unnecessary as every other."
"Philosophers do not easily recognize that there is a point where thinking—like boiling an egg—must come to a stop."
"Zen describes all means and methods for realizing the Tao as 'legs on a snake'—utterly irrelevant attachments."
"Zen does not make the mistake of using the experience 'all things are of one Suchness' as the premise for an ethic of universal brotherhood."
"Seeing, then, that there is no possibility of departing from the Tao, one is like Hsüan-chüeh’s 'easygoing' man."
"The simplest cure is to feel free to block, so that one does not block at blocking."
"Zen is not merely a cult of impulsive action. The point of mo chih ch’u is not to eliminate reflective thought but to eliminate 'blocking' in both action and thought."
"Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes."
"To try to formulate the Zen experience as a proposition—'everything is the Tao'—and then to analyze it and draw conclusions from it is to miss it completely."
"In Zen there is neither self nor Buddha to which one can cling, no good to gain and no evil to be avoided, no thoughts to be eradicated and no mind to be purified."
"Zen is not to know what this reality is. Awakening is to know what reality is not."
"Zen training can begin only when it has been finished."
"Though the guests avoid political, financial, or business matters in their conversation, there is sometimes non-argumentative discussion of philosophical matters, though the preferred topics are artistic and natural."
"Escape from these concerns is as natural and necessary as sleep, and they feel neither compunction nor awkwardness in belonging for a while to the Taoist world of carefree hermits."
"If the mind is not overlaid with wind and waves, you will always be living among blue mountains and green trees."
"The Zen gardener has no mind to impose his own intention upon natural forms, but is careful rather to follow the 'intentionless intention' of the forms themselves."
"The air is not actively inhaled; it is just allowed to come–and then, when the lungs are comfortably filled, it is allowed to go out once more."
"For points of arrival are too abstract, too Euclidean to be enjoyed, and it is all very much like eating the precise ends of a banana without getting what lies in between."
"To travel is to be alive, but to get somewhere is to be dead, for as our own proverb says, 'To travel well is better than to arrive.'"
"One must simply face the fact that Zen is all that side of life which is completely beyond our control."
"Awareness of the 'eternal now' comes about by the same principle as the clarity of hearing and seeing and the proper freedom of the breath."
"There is only this now. It does not come from anywhere; it is not going anywhere. It is not permanent, but it is not impermanent."