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These Buddhist zen quotes will open your eyes to more profound wisdom if you are a zen practitioner or looking for inner peace.
Reading short quotes on zen is a great way to bring calmness and inner peace.
What does Zen mean spiritually?
If you are wondering what Zen exactly is? It is, indeed, impossible to define.
You can loosely call it a peaceful state with no inner strife where you are relaxed and one with the universe.
Traditionally, Zen is considered a state of ‘no – mindedness.’ A mind with no mind.
Simply put, you are at complete ease with yourself, and your thoughts are not making you restless.
A Zen practitioner aims to attain salvation in life (some call it enlightenment) and rise above life and death.
Zen Buddhism believes everybody has the potential to achieve this internal state of Buddhahood.
We hope these Buddism zen quotes from various spiritual thinkers help with better inner clarity, mental calmness, and gratitude in daily living.
Best Zen Quotes And Sayings
We carry inside us the wonders we seek outside us.
– Rumi
This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.
– Alan Watts
The way out is through the door. Why is it that no one will use this method?
– Confucius
Zen teaches that if we can open up to the inevitability of our demise, we can begin to transform and lighten up about it.
– Allen Klein
Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.
– Alan W. Watts
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
– Eleanor Roosevelt
I’m here to tell you that the path to peace is right there, when you want to get away.
– Pema Chodron
If you have inner peace, nobody can force you to be a slave to the outer reality.
– Sri Chinmoy
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
– Saul Bellow
To study Buddhism is to study ourselves. To study ourselves is to forget ourselves.
– Dogen Zenji
Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
– Yoda
Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.
– Buddha
Recognize the ego for what it is: a collective dysfunction, the insanity of the human mind.
– Eckhart Tolle
Daily Zen Quotes Of The Day
Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.
– Buddha
Zen is not an art, it’s not a religion. It’s a realisation.
– Gene Clark
In the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am – unbound.
– Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Guilt, regret, resentment, sadness & all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past & not enough presence.
– Eckhart Tolle
Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
You should study not only that you become a mother when your child is born, but also that you become a child.
– Dogen Zenji
What was never lost can never be found.
– Zen Saying
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.
– Jalaluddin Rumi
Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
– Alan Watts
One who conquers himself is greater than another who conquers a thousand times a thousand on the battlefield.
– Buddha
Throughout this life, you can never be certain of living long enough to take another breath.
– Huang Po
Life is a journey. Time is a river. The door is ajar.
– Jim Butcher
Meditation is the ultimate mobile device; you can use it anywhere, anytime, unobtrusively.
– Sharon Salzberg
Inspirational Buddha Quotes About Zen
Practice is this life, and realization is this life, and this life is revealed right here and now.
– Maezumi Roshi
Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.
– Meister Eckhart
Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.
– Shunryu Suzuki
Meditation is the ultimate mobile device; you can use it anywhere, anytime, unobtrusively.
– Sharon Salzberg
The world is its own magic.
– Shunryu Suzuki
I come to realize that mind is no other than mountains and rivers and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and stars.
– Dogen Zenji
When you plant a seed of love, it is you that blossoms.
– Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati
We have only now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us, day and night.
– Jack Kornfield
You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.
– Buddha
When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it.
– Eckhart Tolle
Don’t seek, don’t search, don’t ask, don’t knock, don’t demand — relax.
– Osho
Think with your whole body.
– Taisen Deshimaru
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.
– Ray Bradbury
Inspiring Zen Koan Quotes
In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.
– Buddha
In a mind clear as still water, even the waves, breaking, are reflecting its light.
– Dogen Zenji
The only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step that you are taking at this moment. That’s all there ever is.
– Eckhart Tolle
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.
– Wu-Men
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!
– Taisen Deshimaru
Flow with whatever may happen, and let your mind be free: Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.
– Zhuang Zhou
The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I’m looking for the truth, and so it goes away. Puzzling.
– Robert M. Pirsig
Wherever you are, be there totally.
– Eckhart Tolle
It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.
– Seneca
People living deeply have no fear of death.
– Anais Nin
Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance.
– Taisen Deshimaru
My experience is that the teachers we need most are the people we’re living with right now.
– Byron Katie
We hope you enjoy reading our famous Shin zen quotes collection and find peace within.
Share it with your loved ones in social circles, encouraging them to be lovers of wisdom and understanding.
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