Zen Master Quotes

Don't seek the truth; just drop your opinions.

The Zen master can see precisely what it will take to cause your awareness to become free. But the Zen master can't do it for you.

Chi is developed through meditation, through studying with one who has a great deal of it.

As the Japanese Zen masters say, “Don't seek the truth; just drop your opinions”. Drop your theories; don't seek the truth.

There is really only one Zen Master ... and that's yourself.

A zen master's life is one continuous mistake.

If the Zen master sees that it will cause a person to progress, he will ask that person to do a task. The task is charged with power if it's performed properly. It's a koan between yourself and the Zen Master.

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.

You may wonder which came first: the skill or the hard work. But that's a moot point. The Zen master cleans his own studio. So should you.

A master of an art is someone who's been mastered by the art. They've become so one with what they teach that you can't tell the teacher from the student.

You're not listening to the Zen master, what he is saying outwardly, but even more importantly...what he is saying inwardly.

The renowned seventh-century Zen master Seng-tsan taught that true freedom is being "without anxiety about imperfection.

In the old days, Zen was not really practiced so much in a monastery. The Zen Master usually lived up on a top of the mountain or the hill or in the forest or sometimes in the village.

In Zen we have no gurus.

In the advanced practice, the relationship between the Zen master and the student becomes very terse. The Zen master will expect things of the student because the student is in graduate school.

It's a relationship like to a crusty Zen master, or something like that. And it is really like another entity because you cannot predict the answers.

You have to begin to develop a repertory of jokes, multi-plane spiritual jokes, the sort of things the Zen masters tell each other when they're asleep. These are the secret teachings.

Someone once inquired of a Far Eastern Zen master, who had a great serenity and peace about him no matter what pressures he faced, "How do you maintain that serenity and peace?" He replied, "I never leave my place of meditation." He meditated early in the morning and for the rest of the day, he carried the peace of those moments with him in his mind and heart.

A Zen master, when asked where he would go after he died, replied, 'To Hell, for that's where help is needed most.'

Happiness only comes when you let go of who you think you are. If you think you're wealthy and powerful and noble and truthful or horrible and demonic, whatever it may be, it's all a waste of time. Take it from the Zen Master. He knows.

This building we're in has doors and windows. If we close the doors and windows, we can't get out. People lock themselves inside a house of delusions. But they're only delusions. They can leave anytime. Actually there is no house to leave. There's not even any leaving. What we see are flowers in the sky, the moon in the water. As for the meditative powers of Zen masters like Hsu-yun, sometimes it's useful to meditate and sometimes it isn't.

Zen is not a religion. There is no room for a cult. There is no dependence on a teacher. There is only learning how to use your own mind and making it strong.

Everyone needs a spiritual guide: a minister, rabbi, counselor, wise friend, or therapist. My own wise friend is my dog. He has deep knowledge to impart. He makes friends easily and doesn't hold a grudge. He enjoys simple pleasures and takes each day as it comes. Like a true Zen master he eats when he is hungry and sleeps when he is tired. He's not hung up about sex. Best of all, he befriends me with an unconditional love that human beings would do well to imitate.

There are two primary ways of studying Zen. Either an individual will enter into a Zen monastery and study with a Zen master there, or they will study with a Zen master who lives in the contemporary world.

The Zen masters have the right idea-no pain no gain: thwack a silly nebbish and he'll remember it far longer and more indelibly than any words you muster at him. Not absolutely everything can or should have to be explained, and particularly not to everybody. But a concussion is a value-judgment anyone gets the point of.

The story of the Zen Master whose only response was always "Is that so?" shows the good that comes through inner nonresistance to events, that is to say, being at one with what happens. The story of the man whose comment was invariably a laconic "Maybe" illustrates the wisdom of nonjudgment, and the story of the ring points to the fact of impermanence which, when recognized, leads to nonattachment. Nonresistance, nonjudgement, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.

I was talking to a Zen master the other day and he said, "You shall be my disciple."I looked at him and said, "Who was Buddha's teacher?" He looked at me in a very odd way for a moment and then he burst into laughter and handed me a piece of clover.

I have lived with several Zen masters -- all of them cats.

How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb? The plum tree in the garden!

We have been teaching together [with Kaz] now for more than twenty years in sesshins, in international travel programs in Japan and China, as well as intensives on Buddhism that focus on the work of Zen Master Dogen and Ryokan, as well as on many of the Mahayana sutras.

I seemed to recall some words from an old Zen master, something like, "My Zen cuts down mountains." My rejection of Buddhism was a cutting down of mountains; that is precisely how it felt to me.

Naturally, the Zen Master Rama philosophy is to have a high state of awareness and material success.

Others have falsely claimed to be the inspiration for Tom Booker in The Horse Whisperer. The one who truly inspired me was Buck Brannaman. His skill, understanding and his gentle, loving heart have parted the clouds for countless troubled creatures. Buck is the Zen master of the horse world.

When I go visit my brother monks in Japan and sit down with other Zen Masters, they look at my crazy clothes and my strange expression, but they feel the power that emanates from my dedication to the practice. So they are comfortable with me, yet they're very uncomfortable.

Children are natural Zen masters; their world is brand new in each and every moment.

Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.

If we had the consciousness of a cat or a dog, we would have it in us to become perfect Zen masters. We could gnaw on a bone, take a nap, play with a spider until we killed it, get our litter just right, and be innocently and serenely present. Meaning would mean nothing to us, nor would we need it to mean anything. We would be free, and we would be spared. But, we are human beings, and we posses that odd duck – human consciousness.

The majority of the ten thousand states of mind cannot be discussed. It is rather a question of teaching a person to step outside the conceptual framework they have and transmitting blocks of awareness to an individual psychically.

In Zen, and in other forms of self discovery, we do have a transference that occurs where psychically, information, blocks of attention, are transferred to the student.

Korea's first Zen Master-poet wrote simple yet elegant poetry of the world he inhabited, both physically and spiritually, and of daily insights-a pause along the way for a deep clear breath, a moon-viewing moment, a seasonal note or a farewell poem to a departing monk. His poems speak softly and clearly, like hearing a temple bell that was struck a thousand years ago.

Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.

Find a teacher of Tantric Zen and study with them because it is transference of awareness, a sharing of the perception of the beauty of life.

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.

The samurais were very interested in Zen because they admired the tremendous precision that the Zen Masters had, their lack of fear and pain and their absolute lack of fear of death.

Zen Master Dogen has pointed out that anxiety, when accepted, is the driving force to enlightenment in that it lays bare the human dilemma at the same time that it ignites our desire to break out of it.

What is Tantric Zen? Well, I don't think I can give you a straight answer, since I don't happen to be a very straight Zen master.

In deep self-acceptance grows a compassionate understanding. As one Zen master said when I asked if he ever gets angry, 'Of course I get angry, but then a few minutes later I say to myself, 'What's the use of this,' and I let it go.'

Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.

The teaching of the ten thousand states of mind, particularly as one advances further, is done through transmission. This is where we differ from teaching algebra or calculus.

The Zen Master warns: 'If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!' This admonition points up that no meaning that comes from outside of ourselves is real. The Buddhahood of each of us has already been obtained. We need only recognize it. Philosophy, religion, patriotism, all are empty idols. The only meaning in our lives is what we each bring to them. Killing the Buddha on the road means destroying the hope that anything outside of ourselves can be out master. No one is any bigger than anyone else. There are no mothers or fathers for grown-ups, only sisters and brothers.