---
title: zen quotes
tags: zen, philosophy, quotes
created: 2021-02-11
---

{%hackmd @shitchell/dark-theme %}

zen
===

most of us know that feeling---like something is missing---and searching to find it is noble, no doubt. but the illusion begins when an apple tastes sweet; soft music sounds soothing; and roses smell lovely. we see all these things as outside of us, when the truth is each joy, each pain, and our every experience occurs in only one place---within.

---

*Wise men don’t judge – they seek to understand.*
---Wei Wu Wei

*Peace of mind is that mental condition in which you have accepted the worst.*
---Lin Yutang

*Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.*
---Alan Watts

*There is the principle of the Way that we must make one mistake after another.*
[---Dogen](https://nyoho.com/tag/life-is-one-continuous-mistake/)

*Wherever you are, it’s the place you need to be.*
---Maxime Lagacé

*The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands.*
---Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)

*Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?*
---Zhuangzi

*Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.*
---Buddha

*If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.*
---Lao Tzu

*Forget the years, forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home.*
---Zhuangzi

*Every experience is a lesson. Every loss is a gain.*
---Sathya Sai Baba

*The true purpose is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes.*
---Shunryu Suzuki

*If we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.*
---Alan Watts

*Zen is a path of liberation. It liberates you. It is freedom from the first step to the last. You are not required to follow any rules; you are required to find out your own rules and your own life in the light of awareness.*
---Osho

*To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.*
---Confucius

*If you chase two rabbits, you catch none.*
---Confucius

*The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.*
---Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)

*Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.*
---Lao Tzu

*If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.*
---Dalai Lama

*All things are difficult before they are easy.*
---Thomas Fuller

*Words diminish meanings; these words included.*
---Unknown

*Those who seek the easy way do not seek the true way.*
---Dogen

*I follow four dictates: face it, accept it, deal with it, then let it go.*
---Sheng-yen

*These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb.*
---Najwa Zebian

*It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.*
---Edmund Hillary

*Even if it seems certain that you will lose, retaliate. Neither wisdom nor technique has a place in this. A real man does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death. By doing this, you will awaken from your dreams.*
---Yamamoto Tsunetomo (Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai)

*When feeling broken, remember that it is through the cracks that light shines in.*
---Adapted from Leonard Cohen

*A wise man speaks because he has something to say; a fool because he has to say something.*
---Plato

*The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.*
---Confucius

*Letting go takes a lot of courage sometimes. But once you let go, happiness comes very quickly. You won’t have to go around search for it.*
---Thich Nhat Hanh

*Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything – anger, anxiety, or possessions – we cannot be free.*
---Thich Nhat Hanh

*If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.*
---Rabindranath Tagore

*Letting go is the lesson. Letting go is always the lesson. Have you ever noticed how much of our agony is all tied up with craving and loss?*
---Susan Gordon Lydon

*If you want to travel the Way of Buddhas and Zen masters, then expect nothing, seek nothing, and grasp nothing.*
---Dogen

*Do not become caught in the teaching. You must be able to let it go.*
---Thich Nhat Hanh

*Let go. Let Be. See through everything and be free, complete, luminous, at home — at ease.*
---Lama Surya Das

*Balance is the perfect state of still water. Let that be our model. It remains quiet within and is not disturbed on the surface.*
---Confucius

*Have good trust in yourself, not in the One that you think you should be, but in the One that you are.*
---Taizan Maezumi

*When we have our body and mind in order, everything else will exist in the right place, in the right way.*
---Shunryu Suzuki

*Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions.*
---Mark Richardson

*As you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start disappearing. You are, but the mind is utterly empty.*
---Osho

*Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.*
---Bodhidharma

*Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate.*
---Huang Po

*The things I carry are my thoughts. That’s it. They are the only weight. My thoughts determine whether I am free and light or burdened.*
---Kamal Ravikant

*Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious.*
---D.T. Suzuki

*I never think of the future – it comes soon enough.*
---Albert Einstein

*Time’s the king of men; he’s both their parent, and he is their grave, and gives them what he will, not what they crave.*
---William Shakespeare

*Don’t waste your time chasing butterflies. Mend your garden, and the butterflies will come.*
---Mario Quintana

*We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.*
---D.T. Suzuki

*Reality is created by the mind, we can change our reality by changing our mind.*
---Plato

*In order to be effective, truth must penetrate like an arrow – and that is likely to hurt.*
---Wei Wu Wei

*Not knowing how near the truth is, we seek it far away.*
---Hakuin Ekaku

*It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.*
---Alexis de Tocqueville

*Truth is not far away. It is nearer than near. There is no need to attain it, since not one of your steps leads away from it.*
---Dogen

*The farther away you are from the truth, the more the hateful and pleasurable states will arise.*
---Bodhidharma

*The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinion for or against.*
---Sengcan

*If you are under control, you lose the danger of glimpsing an unknown realm.*
---Kazuaki Tanahashi

*I feel cut off only because I am split within myself, because I try to be divided from my own feelings and sensations. What I feel and sense therefore seems foreign to me. And on being aware of the unreality of this division, the universe does not seem foreign any more.*
---Alan Watts

*Taoism has no rules. It’s a suggestion for perceiving life in its wholeness, without unnecessary categorization, yet enjoying the beauty of categorization.*
---Frederick Lenz

*Patience from a Buddhist perspective is not a “wait and see” attitude, but rather one of “just be there”.*
---Lodro Rinzler

*We are not disturbed by what happens to us, but by our thoughts about what happens to us.*
---Epictetus

*Unless we agree to suffer we cannot be free from suffering.*
---D.T. Suzuki

*When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That’s the message he is sending.*
---Thich Nhat Hanh

*Do not permit the events of your daily lives to bind you, but never withdraw yourselves from them. Only by acting thus can you earn the title of ‘A Liberated One’.*
---Huang Po

*Those who don’t know how to suffer are the worst off. There are times when the only correct thing we can do is to bear out troubles until a better day.*
---Ming-Dao Deng

*Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.*
---Matsuo Basho

*A finger points at the moon, but the moon is not at the tip of the finger. Words points at the truth, but the truth is not in words.*
---Huineng

*A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms.*
---Zen Shin

*It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts, passing before you. Just witnessing, not interfering not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness.*
---Osho

*There is no beginning to practice nor end to enlightenment; There is no beginning to enlightenment nor end to practice.*
---Dogen

*As long as we remain within the confines of the thinking mind, we can’t experience the state of non-thinking. If we can’t experience non-thinking, we will not understand what our life truly is. Please realize this for yourself! Just sit.*
---Taizan Maezumi

*Even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment is to go astray.*
---Sengcan

*You should sit and meditate for 20 minutes, unless you’re too busy, then you should sit and meditate for an hour.*
---Zen Proverb

*Beware of an old man in a profession where men usually die young.*
---Bohdi Sanders, Modern Bushido: Living a Life of Excellence

*What you are looking for is what's looking.*
---St. Francis of Assissi

koans
---

*When asked why he practiced zen, the student said, “Because I intend to become a Buddha.”
His teacher picked up a brick and started polishing it. The student asked “What are you doing?” The teacher replied, “I am trying to make a mirror.”
“How can you make a mirror by polishing a brick?”
“How can you become Buddha by doing zazen? If you understand sitting Zen, you will know that Zen is not about sitting or lying down. If you want to learn sitting Buddha, know that sitting Buddha is without any fixed form. Do not use discrimination in the non-abiding dharma. If you practice sitting as Buddha, you must kill Buddha. If you are attached to the sitting form, you are not yet mastering the essential principle.”
The student heard this admonition and felt as if he had tasted sweet nectar.*
---Dōgen Zenji

---

*Dizang asked Xiushan, “Where do you come from?”
Xiushan said, “From the South.”
Dizang said, “How is Buddhism in the South these days?”
Xiushan said, “There is extensive discussion””
Dizang said, “How can that compare to me here planting the fields and making rice to eat?”
Xiushan said, “What can you do about the world?”
Dizang said, “What do you call the world?”*
---Book of Serenity

---

*A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near Hakuin. One day, without any warning, her parents discovered she was pregnant. This made her parents angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin.
In great anger the parents went to the master. "Is that so?" was all he would say. After the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. By this time he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him, but he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his neighbors and everything else the child needed by takuhatsu.[a]
A year later the girl could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth - the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fish market.
The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back.
Hakuin smiled and willingly yielded the child, saying: "Is that so? It's good to hear this baby has his/her father"*