50 Zen Quotes On Life, Death, Anger, Love, And Happiness

50 Zen Quotes On Life, Death, Anger, Love, And Happiness:

#1 Dogen

“If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?”

#2 Shunryu Suzuki

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few”

#3 Kabir              

“Many have died; you also will die. The drum of death is being beaten. The world has fallen in love with a dream. Only sayings of the wise will remain.”

#4 Bob Dylan

“Life is more or less a lie, but then again, that’s exactly the way we want it to be.”

#5 Eckhart Tolle

“I have lived with several Zen masters — all of them cats.”

#6 Zen Proverb

”Only when you can be extremely pliable and soft can you be extremely hard and strong.”

#7 Bodhidharma

“Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.”

#8 Forrest Curran

“For your past, for your flaws, and ultimately for your stress; I judge no one whom I’ve met along the way because in a sense we were all wounded in our own ways.”

#9 Osho

“To accept some idea of truth without experiencing it is like a painting of a cake on paper which you cannot eat.”

#10 Alan Wilson Watts

“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”

#11 Jalaluddin Rumi

”Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.

#12 Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

“Have good trust in yourself … not in the One that you think you should be, but in the One that you are.”

#13 Huang Po

“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.”

#14 Viktor Frankl

”Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.”

#15 Buddha

”As a bee gathering nectar does not harm or disturb the color and fragrance of the flower; so do the wise move through the world.”

READ MORE: 42 Gautama Buddha Quotes

#16 Peter Matthiessen

“When you hear that all beings are Buddha, don’t fall into the error of thinking there’s more than one Buddha.”

#17 Gary Snyder

“When the mind is exhausted of images, it invents its own.”

#18 Jon J. Muth

“It is easy to believe we are each waves and forget we are also the ocean.”

#19 Gene Clark

”Zen is not an art, it’s not a religion. It’s a realization.”    

#20 Thich Nhat Hanh

“We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.”

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#21 Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.”

#22 Nagarjuna

“Nothing ever exists entirely alone. Everything is in relation to everything else.”

#23 Yoda

”Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”    

#24 Ikkyu

“Like vanishing dew, a passing apparition or the sudden flash of lightning — already gone — thus should one regard one’s self.”

#25 Sri Chinmoy

”If you have inner peace, nobody can force you to be a slave to the outer reality.”

READ MORE: 40 Sri Chinmoy Quotes

#26 Hermann Hesse

”In order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it.”

#27 Kobayashi Issa

“Where there are humans, you’ll find flies, and Buddhas.”

#28 Susan Gordon Lydon

“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?”

#29 Huang Po

“Awareness is the greatest agent for change.”

#30 Bruce Lee

“Not being tense but ready. Not thinking but not dreaming. Not being set but flexible. Liberation from the uneasy sense of confinement. It is being wholly and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come.”

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#31 Confucius

“The way out is through the door. Why is it that no one will use this method?”

#32 Robert M. Pirsig

“The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, I’m looking for the truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling.”

#33 Ray Bradbury

“Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You’ve got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it.”

#34 Taisen Deshimaru

“If you have a glass full of liquid you can discourse forever on its qualities, discuss whether it is cold, warm, whether it is really and truly composed of H-2-O, or even mineral water, or sake. Meditation is Drinking it!”

#35 Thich Nhat Hanh

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

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#36 Zen Proverb

”Let go over a cliff, die completely, and then come back to life — after that you cannot be deceived.”

#37 Allen Klein

”Zen teaches that if we can open up to the inevitability of our demise, we can begin to transform and lighten up about it.”    

#38 Jack Kerouac

“When you’ve understood this scripture, throw it away. If you can’t understand this scripture, throw it away. I insist on your freedom.”

#39 Charlie Ambler

“The good life can be as simple as just paying attention.”

#40 Shunryu Suzuki

“I discovered that it is necessary, absolutely necessary, to believe in nothing. That is, we have to believe in something which has no form and no color–something which exists before all forms and colors appear.”

READ MORE: 50 Quotes About Perseverance

#41 B. D. Schiers

“My experience is that the teachers we need most are the people we’re living with right now.”

#42 Koun Yamada

”The practice of Zen is forgetting the self in the act of uniting with something.”

#43 Anonymous

“The one who is good at shooting does not hit the center of the target.”

#44 Pema Chödrön

”Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”

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#45 Adi Da

” Relax. Nothing is under control.”

#46 Dōgen

“Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed, do not squander your life.”

#47 Dr. Seuss

”And when they played they really played. And when they worked they really worked.”

#48 Maxime Lagacé

“Wherever you are, it’s the place you need to be.” 

#49 Eric Hoffer

“The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.”

#50 Unknown

“Ego is a desire machine.”

Featured image credit – Romolo Tavani/Shutterstock

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References

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism/subdivisions/zen_1.shtml
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zen