What characterizes Zen is this:
simplicity and sincerity, and freedom
-D. T. Suzuki
Settle in a phrase
the essence of Zen.
-A Zen Forest
everything changes; everything is connected; pay attention.
-Jane Hirschfield and Bill Moyers
Wearing robes, eating meals:
Outside of these - no Zen.
-A Zen Forest
Zen teaches nothing.
It merely enables us to wake up and become aware.
-D. T. Suzuki
Zen is the art of seeing into the nature of one's being,
and it points the way from bondage to freedom.
-D. T. Suzuki
Zen explains nothing.
It sees.
Sees what?
Not an Absolute Object but Absolute Seeing.
-Thomas Merton
The idea of Zen is to catch life as it flows.
-D. T. Suzuki
Zen is first and last a matter of experience.
-Christmas Humphreys
Zen is not some kind of excitement,
but merely concentration on our usual everyday routine.
-Shunyru Suzuki
One thing at a time, in full concentration,
is the mental discipline.
-Christmas Humphreys
No symbolism or simile or analogy
is needed in Zen.
-Christmas Humphreys
Zen is first and last a matter of experience.
-Christmas Humphreys
Anything not based on experience is outside Zen.
-D. T. Suzuki
What was up in the heavens,
Zen has brought down to earth.
-D. T. Suzuki
-D. T. Suzuki
What was up in the heavens,
Zen has brought down to earth.
-D. T. Suzuki
Trees, grass, mountains, streams,
stars, the sea, the moon -
with this alphabet the texts of Zen are written.
-Unknown
Zen is not some kind of excitement,
but merely concentration on our usual everyday routine.
-Shunyru Suzuki
One thing at a time, in full concentration,
is the mental discipline.
-Christmas Humphreys
No symbolism or simile or analogy
is needed in Zen.
-Christmas Humphreys
Zen is neither a bystanders philosophy nor a principle.
but an all-embracing human activity,
a way of life, a way of identification.
-Soiku Shigematsu
According to Zen
all things are fingers pointing to the same experience.
-Christmas Humphreys
Zen tries to make you accept things,
and when you have accepted them
you give a hearty laugh.
-Christmas Humphreys
In Zen affirmation and denial are equal and opposite,
and ultimately both a waste of time.
-Christmas Humphreys
Zen is a zip fastener between the opposites.
It passes, and they are no more.
-Christmas Humphreys
Zen, in brief, reduces the tension of all opposites,
including the ultimate strain of This and That,
by rising above them.
-Christmas Humphreys
In Zen,
we don't find the answers.
We lose the questions.
-Zen Saying
Zen is a state of consciousness beyond opposites.
-Christmas Humphreys
The aim of Zen
is to focus attention on Reality itself,
instead of our intellectual and emotional reactions to reality -
reality being the ever-changing, ever-growing,
indefinable something known as "life,"
which will ever stop for a moment
for us to fit is satisfactorily
into any rigid system of pigeonholes and ideas.
-Alan Watts
Think of Zen, of the Void, of Good and Evil,
and you are bound hand and foot.
Think only and entirely and completely
of what you are doing in the moment
and you are free as a bird.
-R. H. Blyth
The whole essence of Zen
consists in walking along the razor's edge of Now -
to be so utterly, so completely present
that no problem, no suffering,
nothing that is not who you are in your essence,
can survive in you.
In the Now, in the absence of time, all your problems dissolve.
Suffering needs time; it cannot survive in the Now.
-Eckhart Tolle
but an all-embracing human activity,
a way of life, a way of identification.
-Soiku Shigematsu
It has been said that the difference
between Zen and all other forms of religion is that
between Zen and all other forms of religion is that
all other paths wind their way slowly up the mountainside,
but, Zen, like a Roman road,
thrusts all obstacles aside and moves in a direct line to the goal.'
-Alan Watts
Zen is the path, the direct, unswerving path,
which leads beyond the intellect.
-Christmas Humphreys
In Zen all things are ends in themselves,
while having no end.
-Christmas Humphreys
but, Zen, like a Roman road,
thrusts all obstacles aside and moves in a direct line to the goal.'
-Alan Watts
Zen is the path, the direct, unswerving path,
which leads beyond the intellect.
-Christmas Humphreys
In Zen all things are ends in themselves,
while having no end.
-Christmas Humphreys
According to Zen
all things are fingers pointing to the same experience.
-Christmas Humphreys
Zen tries to make you accept things,
and when you have accepted them
you give a hearty laugh.
-Christmas Humphreys
In Zen affirmation and denial are equal and opposite,
and ultimately both a waste of time.
-Christmas Humphreys
Zen is a zip fastener between the opposites.
It passes, and they are no more.
-Christmas Humphreys
Zen, in brief, reduces the tension of all opposites,
including the ultimate strain of This and That,
by rising above them.
-Christmas Humphreys
In Zen,
we don't find the answers.
We lose the questions.
-Zen Saying
Zen is a state of consciousness beyond opposites.
-Christmas Humphreys
Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters;
after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen,
mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters;
after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.
-Dogen
The aim of Zen
is to focus attention on Reality itself,
instead of our intellectual and emotional reactions to reality -
reality being the ever-changing, ever-growing,
indefinable something known as "life,"
which will ever stop for a moment
for us to fit is satisfactorily
into any rigid system of pigeonholes and ideas.
-Alan Watts
Think of Zen, of the Void, of Good and Evil,
and you are bound hand and foot.
Think only and entirely and completely
of what you are doing in the moment
and you are free as a bird.
-R. H. Blyth
The whole essence of Zen
consists in walking along the razor's edge of Now -
to be so utterly, so completely present
that no problem, no suffering,
nothing that is not who you are in your essence,
can survive in you.
In the Now, in the absence of time, all your problems dissolve.
Suffering needs time; it cannot survive in the Now.
-Eckhart Tolle
To Zen, incarnation is excarnation;
the flesh is no-flesh;
here-now equals emptiness and infinity.
-D. T. Suzuki
the flesh is no-flesh;
here-now equals emptiness and infinity.
-D. T. Suzuki
Zen is no self.
-Timothy Freke
