Zen Buddhist Quotes

Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters.

To say one is revolutionary is a little like saying one is a Zen Buddhist - if you say you are, you probably aren't.

The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.

You grow, learn, and the more I can sit in silence and be comfortable with myself, the more I can make noise, as ironic and Zen Buddhist and satanic as it sounds!

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.

Where can I find a man who has forgotten words, so I can have a few words with him?

There is a director who should make 'Silver Surfer' - he is mentally committed to it. He's doing another movie now. What's most important to me about this guy, first, is that he's incredible with visuals. But he's also a spiritual guy, a Zen Buddhist. ... Galactus is a force of nature, not a being. That's all I'm saying.

To set up what you like against what you dislike, this is the disease of the mind.

But for the first time, I had a religious identity. I had come home. And so I called myself a Zen Buddhist at the age of 18.

But the solution to the riddle of life and space and time lies outside space and time. For, as it should be abundantly clear by now, nothing inside a frame can state, or even ask, anything about that frame. The solution, then, is not the finding of an answer to the riddle of existence, but the realization that there is no riddle. This is the essence of the beautiful, almost Zen Buddhist closing sentences of the Tracticus: "For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist."

The three elements of creativity are thus: loving, knowing, and doing - or heart, mind, and hands - or, as Zen Buddhist teaching has it; great faith, great question, and great courage.

According to Zen Buddhist cosmology there are ten thousand different states of mind to view and understand life through.

There's something Zen-like about the way I work - it's like raking gravel in a Zen Buddhist garden.

Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.

From my own personal encounters and studies with both Tantric and Zen Buddhist monks, I have found them to be humorous, warm, charming, and compassionate.

The greatest effort is not concerned with results.

Fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

If you exchanged wedding vows, tape them to your bathroom mirror and read them aloud to yourself every morning along with the ritual brushing of teeth. It's not realistic to believe that you will live your promises as a daily practice -- unless you're a saint or a highly evolved Zen Buddhist. Not where marriage is concerned. But you can make a practice of returning to your vows when the going gets rough.

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

What you think you become.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought; what we think we become.

And finally, be assured that Zen asks nothing even as it promises nothing. One can be a Protestant Zen Buddhist, a Catholic Zen Buddhist or a Jewish Zen Buddhist. Zen is a quiet thing. It listens.

To an experienced Zen Buddhist, asking if one believes in Zen or one believes in the Buddha, sounds a little ludicrous, like asking if one believes in air or water. Similarly Quality is not something you believe in, Quality is something you experience.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.

Three things cannot long be hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.

Concentrate the mind on the present moment.

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

With the near-death or clinical near-death phenomenon some people who are brought back from 'death' have reported being alive the entire time they were 'dead.' This phenomenon occurs among people with a wide diversity of religious belief and no religious belief at all - from atheists to Zen Buddhists.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Watch your step.