Zen is a way of living life;
more accurately,
living life as life lives itself.
-Christmas Humphreys

Zen is not a particular state,
but a normal state:
silent, peaceful, unagitated.
-Deshimaru

In a certain sense, Zen is feeling life
instead of feeling something about life.
-Alan Watts

Life is a fact
and no explanation is necessary or pertinent.
-D. T. Suzuki

Whose mouth could possibly be big enough
to describe things as they are?
-Alan Watts

Enter in.
Be one with the object of contemplation
if you wish to understand.
Don't be an outside observer of life.
Be life.
-T'ao-shan

You cannot experience a river
by capturing a bucketful and examining it.
-Zen Saying

To move the mountain

by scooping water;

To banish the shore

by setting sail.

-A Zen Forest

If you really want to get the the truth of Zen,
get it while walking, while standing,
while sleeping or sitting...while working.
-Pen-Hsein

Zen does not confuse spirituality
with thinking about God
while one is peeling potatoes.
Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
-Alan Watts

Store the whole world

in a grain of millet!

Boil mountains and rivers

in a two-quart pot!

-A Zen Forest

Just this.
-Zen Saying

If you walk, just walk.
If you sit, just sit.
But don't wobble.
-Yunmen

The meaning of the idea of Zen in action:
the art of hitting the mark
with the appropriate energy
by an act of tuning.
-Guy Damian-Knight

There is no such thing as time in Zen;
there are twenty-four hours
out of every twenty-four.
-Christmas Humphreys

Zen is life:
to chase after Zen is like chasing one's own shadow,
and all the time one is running away from the sun.
-Alan Watts

It is there, right where you are;
If you seek it, obviously you do not see it.
-Muso Kokushi

Zen is like looking for spectacles
that are sitting on your nose.
-Zen Saying

When you look for it,
You become further from it;
When you seek it,
You turn away from it all the more.
-Linji

Here it is - right now.
Start thinking about it
and you miss it.
-Huang-Po

The more you think and talk,
the more you lose the way.
-Seng-Ts'an

We are like someone immersed in water,
who complains of nothing to drink.
-Hsueh-Feng

If you do not get it from yourself,
where will you go for it?
-Zen Saying

While striving to catch the butterfly of Zen
in the net of reason
we must know that the task is hopeless.
-Christmas Humphreys

Do not search for truth.
Just stop having opinions.
-Seng-Ts'an

Zen.

It is to stop running away, turning away,

denying, making things up.

-Bonnie Myotai Treace

Just get rid of the false
and you will automatically realise the true.
-Ho-Shan

You don't need to avoid or deny anything.
It is enough to just know about it.
When you are busy trying to avoid something,
it's still affecting you.
Simply cease to be affected or impelled by anything
and you'll find you are free.
-Caosan

Do not permit the events of your daily life to bind you,
but never withdraw yourself from them.
-Zen Saying

The driver knows how much an ox can carry,
and keeps the ox from being overloaded.
You know your way and your state of mind.
Do not carry too much.
-Zen Saying

Leave your front door open
and your back door open.
Let thoughts come and go.
Just don't serve them tea.
-Shunryu Suzuki

It is very important to develop a state of mind
called "immovable wisdom".
This doesn't mean be rigid, heavy or dead
like a rock or a block of wood.
On the contrary, it means having complete fluidity
around an unmoving center,
so that your mind is clear and ready
to direct attention wherever it may be needed.
-Takuan

The immovable center within
spontaneously responds to whatever presents itself.
The mirror of wisdom reflects things
the moment they appear
yet is always undisturbed and complete.
-Takuan

Zen teaches us to discover
the transcendental core of our own selves
in an immediate and practical sense,
to "taste" divine Being in the here-and-now.
-Karlfried Graf Durchheim

Zen is its essence
is the art of seeing into the nature of one's being,
and it points the way from bondage to freedom.
-D. T. Suzuki

A student of Zen
Walks in Zen and sits in Zen.
Talking and acting,
Or silent and still,
He is always at peace.
He smiles in the face of the executioner.
He remains equanimous,
Even at the moment of death.
-Yoka Daishi

The mind of a Zen Master is perfectly straightforward.
He is neither front or back and is without deceit or delusion.
Every hour of the day,
what he hears and sees are ordinary sights and sounds,
but nothing is distorted.
He is perfectly unattached to things,
and thus doesn't need to shut his eyes and ears.
Because he has eliminated delusion,
perverted views and bad thinking habits,
he is clear and tranquil as an autumn stream.
--Kuei-Shan

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.
-D. T. Suzuki

The adept is Zen is one who manages to be human
with the same artless grace and absence of inner conflict
with which a tree is a tree.
-Alan Watts

If your hermitage
Is deep in the mountains
Surely the moon,
Flowers and crimson leaves
Will become your friends.
-Ryokan

Dip up water -

the moon lies in your hands;

Touch a flower -

the fragrance fills your robes.

-A Zen Garden 

Although there are rocks and tree roots,
Rippling along, just rippling along,
The water runs.
-Wariko Kai

Life, according to Zen, ought to be lived
as a bird flies through the air,
or a fish swims in the water.
-D. T. Suzuki

His movement is like that of water,
his stillness of that of a mirror,
his responses like those of an echo.
-Chuang-tzu

Entering the forest,
he does not disturb a blade of grass.
Entering the water,
he does not make a ripple.
-Zen Saying

Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.
-Ryokan

Still music
Quiet sound
Deep water
Silent ground
-C. Alexander and Annellen Simpkins

Entering the deep mountains
I live in quiet solitude.
The hills are high. The valleys deep
when one lives beneath an old pine tree.
-Yung-chia Ta-shih

The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.
-Li Po

When you get to the top of the mountain,
keep climbing.
-Zen Saying

Knock on the sky
and listen to the sound!
-Zen Saying

Where the sun and moon do not reach,
There is marvelous scenery indeed.
-Zen Saying

When I see
Heaven and earth as
My own garden,
I live that moment
Outside the universe.
-Zen Saying

In the world outside of things

there is nothing to get in the way.

-Muso Soseki

When you pass through,
no one can pin you down,
no one can call you back.
-Ying-An

To be able to return and settle in normality

is the final stage of Zen.

-Trevor Leggett