Japanese Zen Quotes

“Ethnic diversity was not traditionally valued in Japanese Zen or in Japanese culture; in fact, so-called racial purity was idealized.”
― Michael Downing, Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center

“Studies of Japanese Zen rarely include consideration of any aspects of Zen practice that fail to conform to the criteria of otherworldly meditation and enlightenment. The other activities of Zen monks typically are dismissed as vulgar popularizations. More attention is paid to ideal constructs than to what Zen monks actually did (and do). Yet to ignore the so-called non-Zen practices within Japanese Zen is to overlook a vital component of both Zen history and Japanese religion. Many so-called popular rites do not represent random syncretism but are performed in a distinctly Zen manner, the exegesis of which promises to reveal much about how Zen functions as a viable Japanese religion.”
― William M. Bodiford, Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan

“Japanese Zen interpretations of killing stress the vacuity of the act. If an intended victim is empty of true existence (anâtman), then no person is being killed. Instead, killing puts an end to the victim's passions and fosters the Buddha-nature.”
― Michael Jerryson, If You Meet the Buddha on the Road: Buddhism, Politics, and Violence