Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
To live - is that not enough?
Zen has no business with ideas.
Eternity is the Absolute present.
To Zen, time and eternity are one.
That's why I love philosophy: no one wins.
Fundamentally the marksman aims at himself.
We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.
One has not understood until one has forgotten it.
The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious.
Art always has something of the unconscious about it.
I am an artist at living - my work of art is my life.
Unless we die to ourselves, we can never be alive again.
Unless we agree to suffer we cannot be free from suffering.
The waters are in motion, but the moon retains its serenity.
Implicity, there should be something mysterious in every day.
Great works are done when one is not calculating and thinking.
The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow.
Enlightenment is like everyday consciousness but two inches above the ground.
Zen Makes use, to a great extent, of poetical expressions; Zen is wedded to poetry.
The intuitive recognition of the instant, thus reality is the highest act of wisdom.
Unless it grows out of yourself no knowledge is really yours, it is only borrowed plumage.
To point at the moon a finger is needed, but woe to those who take the finger for the moon.
We can see unmistakeably that there is an inner relationship between Zen and the warrior's life.
Zen approaches it from the practical side of life-that is, to work out Enlightenment in life itself.
Zen teaches nothing; it merely enables us to wake up and become aware. It does not teach, it points.
The truth of Zen is the truth of life, and life means to live, to move, to act, not merely to reflect.
Life, according to Zen, ought to be lived as a bird flies through the air, or as a fish swims in the water.
When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect the mountain exercises vanishes into the air.
Until we recognize the SELF that exists apart from who we think we are - we cannot know the Ch'an ( ZEN ) MIND
You ought to know how to rise above the trivialities of life, in which most people are found drowning themselves.
Zen professes itself to be the spirit of Buddhism, but in fact it is the spirit of all religions and philosophies.
Zen in it's essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one's being, and it points the way from bondage to freedom.
The meaning of service is to do the work assigned ungrudgingly and without thought of personal reward material or moral.
Not to be bound by rules, but to be creating one's own rules-this is the kind of life which Zen is trying to have us live.
Personal experience, therefore, is everything in Zen. No ideas are intelligible to those who have no backing of experience.
Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities.
To be a good Zen Buddhist it is not enough to follow the teaching of its founder; we have to experience the Buddha's experience.
Let the intellect alone, it has its usefulness in its proper sphere, but let it not interfere with the flowing of the life-stream.
As soon as you raise a thought and begin to form an idea of it, you ruin the reality itself, because you then attach yourself to form.
Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious.
We do not realize that as soon as our thoughts cease and all attempts at forming ideas are forgotten the Buddha reveals himself before us.
When I say that Zen is life, I mean that Zen is not to be confined within conceptualization, that Zen is what makes conceptualization possible.
Zen has nothing to teach us in the way of intellectual analysis; nor has it any set doctrines which are imposed on its followers for acceptance.
The greatest productions of art, whether painting, music, sculpture or poetry, have invariably this quality-something approaching the work of God.
Facts of experience are valued in Zen more than representations, symbols, and concepts-that is to say, substance is everything in Zen and form nothing.
If you have attained something, this is the surest proof that you have gone astray. Therefore, not to have is to have, silence is thunder, ignorance is enlightenment.
We have two eyes to see two sides of things, but there must be a third eye which will see everything at the same time and yet not see anything. That is to understand Zen.
The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one's humdrum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity.
The worst passion we mortals cherish is the desire to possess. Even when we know that our final destination is a hole not more than three feet square, we have the strongest craving
When we start to feel anxious or depressed, instead of asking, "What do I need to get to be happy?" The question becomes, "What am I doing to disturb the inner peace that I already have?"