187 Quotes About Zen-buddhism

But God is always found where He is least expected, and no one would have thought of looking for Him in the cowshed of a country inn.

Man can never understand his freedom while he regards himself as the mere instrument of fate or while he limits his freedom to whatever he his ego can do to snatch from life the prizes which it desires. To be free man must see himself and life as a whole, not as active power and passive instrument but as two aspects of a single activity.

For while scientist and logician dissect and analyze, the mystic looks for meaning in the whole.

At each moment the mystic accepts the whole of his experience, including himself as he is, his circumstances as they are, and the relationship between them as it is. Wholeness is his keyword; his acceptance is total, and he excludes no part of his experience, however unsavory it may be.

For God is the wholeness of life, which includes every possible aspect of man and is known in accepting the whole of our experience at each moment.

Unaccepted, the universe has no meaning; it is senseless fate and chaos, but acceptance is a way of discovering meaning, not of manufacturing it.

Being undone, we discover we’ve been fooled by wishing wells and have mistaken the fire of desire for radiance.

In Zen training the hungry ghost realm ... presents as the attempt to “get” emptiness. “I needed so much to have nothing to touch,” sings Leonard Cohen, “I’ve always been greedy this way.

Only when one allows themself the right to die, do they then give yourself the permission to live.