Koans Quotes

“Whose silence are you?”
― Thomas Merton

“You listen to people, you listen so deeply that you can hear their past lives,
The crackle of their funeral pyres,”
― Dick Allen, Zen Master Poems (1)

“If you have one friend in the end, it better be yourself.”
― Benjamin Aubrey Myers

“It's easy to identify with all the places we've been hurt and abandoned, but can we identify with the timeless wholeness that weathers every abuse, every condition? (Bonnie Myotai Treace)”
― Melvin McLeod (Editor) Sherab Chodzin Kohn (Translator) by Thich Nhat Hanh

“No riddle, no koan, no double-cross.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“The only thing I know that you don't is whether or not I know anything more than you do.”
― Eugene Noguera

“Kung-an [koans] were in vogue during the Tang Dynasty. Each Zen practitioner had a kung-an to work on. But before this period, Zen Masters did not need kung-an. The kung-an is, therefore, not something absolutely indispensable to the practice of Zen. It is, more or less, a skillful means created by Zen Masters in order to help people who work under their direction.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Keys: A Guide to Zen Practice