Zen Tada > Zen's Quotes

“There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills.”
― Buddha Siddhartha Guatama Shakyamuni

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

“If all it took to become enlightened were to sit and meditate, then all frogs would be Buddhas.”
― Sengai

“Even though you try to put people under control, it is impossible. You cannot do it. The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in a wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large spacious meadow is the way to control him. So it is with people: first let them do what they want, and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good. That is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best one is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them.”
― Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice

“Beware, O wanderer, the road is walking too.”
― Jim Harrison, After Ikkyu & Other Poems

“Just for the record, the weather today is calm and sunny, but the air is full of bullshit.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.”
― Albert Camus, L’été

“Even in zazen you will lose yourself. When you become sleepy, or when your mind starts to wander about, you lose yourself. When your legs become painful—“Why are my legs so painful?”—you lose yourself. ”
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“You just sit in the midst of the problem; when you are a part of the problem, or when the problem is a part of you, there is no problem, because you are the problem itself. The problem is you yourself. If this is so, there is no problem.”
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“When you start to wander about in some delusion which is something apart from you yourself, then your surroundings are not real anymore, and your mind is not real anymore. If you yourself are deluded, then your surroundings are also a misty, foggy delusion. Once you are in the midst of delusion, there is no end to delusion. You will be involved in deluded ideas one after another. Most people live in delusion, involved in their problem, trying to solve their problem. But just to live is actually to live in problems. And to solve the problem is to be a part of it, to be one with it.”
― Shunryu Suzuki

“Forgetting oneself is opening oneself”
― Dogen

“If a tree falls in the forest and it hits a mime, would he make a noise?”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

“In a snowfall that covers the winter grass a white heron uses his own whiteness to disappear.”
― Dogen

“There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.”
― John Holmes

“You cannot change what you are, only what you do.”
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

“O, ah! The awareness of emptiness brings forth a heart of compassion!”
― Gary Snyder

“Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, it's at the end of your arm, as you get older, remember you have another hand: The first is to help yourself, the second is to help others.”
― Sam Levenson

“Because God is never cruel, there is a reason for all things. We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would become monsters of self-regard, creatures of unalloyed self-interest. The terrible pain of loss teaches humility to our prideful kind, has the power to soften uncaring hearts, to make a better person of a good one.”
― Dean Koontz, The Darkest Evening of the Year

“Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“He stepped back and threw his arms out.
"I'm always crazy around you Rose. Here, I'm going to write an impromptu poem for you."
He tipped his head back and shouted to the sky:
"Rose is in red
But never in blue
Sharp as a thorn
Fights like one too.”
― Richelle Mead, Shadow Kiss

“Do everything with a mind that lets go. Don’t accept praise or gain or anything else. If you let go a little you a will have a little peace; if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace; if you let go completely you will have complete peace. ”
― Ajahn Chah

“You are your own teacher. Looking for teachers can’t solve your own doubts. Investigate yourself to find the truth - inside, not outside. Knowing yourself is most important.”
― Ajahn Chah

“Without suffering, there'd be no compassion.”
― Nicholas Sparks, A Walk to Remember

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
― Albert Einstein

“Never respond to an angry person with a fiery comeback, even if he deserves it...Don't allow his anger to become your anger.”
― Bohdi Sanders, Warrior Wisdom: Ageless Wisdom for the Modern Warrior

“The yellow glistens.
It glistens with various yellows,
Citrons, oranges and greens
Flowering over the skin.”
― Wallace Stevens

“All things that have form eventually decay." -Orochimaru”
― Masashi Kishimoto

“I've known supreme happiness, and I'm not greedy enough to want what I have to go on forever. Every dream ends. Wouldn't it be foolish, knowing that nothing lasts forever, to insist that one has a right to do something that does?
[...]but, if eternity existed, it would be this moment.”
― Yukio Mishima, Spring Snow

“One day a man of the people said to Zen Master Ikkyu: “Master, will you please write for me some maxims of the highest wisdom?” Ikkyu immediately took his brush and wrote the word “Attention.” “Is that all?” asked the man. “Will you not add something more?” Ikkyu then wrote twice running: “Attention. Attention.” “Well,” remarked the man rather irritably, “I really don’t see much depth or subtlety in what you have just written.” Then Ikkyu wrote the same word three times running: “Attention. Attention. Attention.” Half angered, the man demanded: “What does that word ‘Attention’ mean anyway?” And Ikkyu answered gently: “Attention means attention.”11”
― Roshi P. Kapleau, The Three Pillars of Zen: Teaching, Practice, and Enlightenment

“Earth, mountains, rivers, hidden in this nothingness.
In this nothingness, earth, mountains, rivers revealed.
Spring flowers, winter snows.
There's no being or non-being, nor denial itself.”
― Saisho Hiroshi

“My thatched hut;
the whole sky Is its roof
The mountains are its hedge,
And it has the sea for a garden.
I’m inside with nothing at all,
Not even a bag,
And yet there are visitors who say
It’s hidden behind a bamboo door”
― Musō Soseki

“Careful!
Even moonlit dewdrops,
If you’re lured to watch,
Are a wall before the Truth.
— Sogyo”
― Sogyo