The Best of the Daily Zen Quotes

A skeptic walks up to a Zen master and asks:
"Is there life after death?"
"How should I know?" the master replied.
"But you're a Zen master!"
"Yes," the Zen master says, "but not a dead one."
ZEN MONDO

Art is frozen Zen.
R. H. BLYTH

Do, or do not. There is no try.
Yoda

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled.
The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
RAY BRADBURY

Most of us go through each day looking for what we saw yesterday.
And, not surprisingly, that is what we find.
James K. Kitchens

So let us go forward, quietly, each on his own path, forever making for the light.
VINCENT VAN GOGH

Prefectionism is slow death.
Hugh Prather

In the deepest mountains and remotest peaks, where for a thousand years, for ten thousand years,
no man has ever set foot-can we find Buddhism there or not?
Gensha

Liberation consists in experiencing and understanding fully and clearly that everything is impermanent
and seeing that there is quite literally nothing to worry about.
Amadeus Sole-Leris

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The invariable mark of wisdom is seeing the miraculous in the common.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The turnip farmer points the way with a turnip.
Issa

Forget not that the earth likes to feel your bare feet
and the winds long to play with your hair.
Kahlil Gibran

Meditation is not about some state, but about the meditator. It's not about some activity
or fixing something. It's about ourselves. If we don't simplify the situation the chance of
taking a good look at ourselves is very small--because what we tend to look at isn't ourselves
but everything else. If something goes wrong, what do we look at? We look at what's going wrong.
We're looking out there all the time, and not at ourselves.
Charlotte Joko Beck

Never lose sight of being able to know that fulfilling your dream
is probably going to fulfill someone else's as well.

Shawn Michael Perry
The shortest answer is doing.
GEORGE HERBERT

There is one art, no more, no less. To do all things with artlessness.
PIET HEIN

Everyday can be regarded as a whole lifespan, since we can only live one day at a time;
the past is gone and the future may or may not come; only this rebirth, this day, this moment,
is important.
Ayya Khema

If you don’t find God in the next person you meet, it’s a waste of time looking for him further.
MOHANDAS K. GANDHI

COMPASSION
Sometimes we think that to develop an open heart, to be truly loving and compassionate,
means that we need to be passive, to allow others to abuse us, to smile and let anyone
do what they want with us. Yet this is not what is meant by compassion. Quite the contrary.
Compassion is not at all weak. It is the strength that arises out of seeing the true nature
of suffering in the world. Compassion allows us to bear witness to that suffering, whether it
is in ourselves or others, without fear; it allows us to name injustice without hesitation,
and to act strongly, with all the skill at our disposal. To develop this mind state of compassion...
is to learn to live, as the Buddha put it, with sympathy for all living beings, without exception.
Sharon Salzberg
TIBETAN PRAYER
Grant that I may be given appropriate difficulties and sufferings on this journey
so that my heart may be truly awakened
and my practice of liberation and universal compassion may be truly fulfilled.
Tibetan Prayer of Making Difficulties Into the Path

Empty, empty! Happy, happy!
Ajahn Jumnien

Trust only movement.
Life happens at the level of events not of words.
Trust movement.
ALFRED ADLER

Habit, laziness, and fear conspire to keep us comfortably within the familiar.
Jane Hirshfield

When people start to mediate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, the often think that somehow saying, "If I jog, I'll be a much better person." "If I could only get a nicer house, I'd be a better person."
If I could meditate and calm down, I'd be a better person."... But loving-kindness--maitri--toward ourselves doesn't
mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy after all these years.
We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness.
The point is not to try to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are
already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's the ground,
that's what we study, that's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.
Pema Chodron

May you trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.
May your mountains rise into and above the clouds
Edward Abbey

Nothing is permanent:
The sun and the moon rise and then set,
The bright clear day is followed by the deep, dark night.
From hour to hour, everything changes.
KALU RINPOCHE

The best things in life are nearest. Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes,
flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

All the harm, fear, and suffering in the world are caused by attachment to the self:
Why should I hold on to this great demon?
SHANTIDEVA

Imagine how it might feel to suspend all your judging
and instead to let each moment be just as it is,
without attempting to evaluate it as "good" or "bad."
This would be a true stillness, a true liberation.
Meditation means cultivating a non-judging attitude toward
what comes up in the mind, come what may.
Jon Kabat-Zinn

Nobody sees a flower—really—it is so small it takes time—
we haven’t time—and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE

It is our mind, and that alone, that chains us or sets us free.
DILGO KHYENTSE RINPOCHE

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and water exhilarating;
to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter...
to be thrilled by the stars at night;
to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring -
these are some of the rewards of the simple life.

JOHN BURROUGHS

The near-enemy of love is attachment. Attachment masquerades as love. It says,
"I will love you if you will love me back." It is a kind of "businessman's" love.
So we think, "I will love this person as long as he doesn't change.
I will love that thing if it will be the way I want it." But this isn't love at all--
it is attachment. There is a big difference between love, which allows and honors and
appreciates, and attachment, which grasps and demands and aims to possess.
When attachment becomes confused with love, it actually separates us from another person.
We feel we need this other person in order to be happy. This quality of attachment
also leads us to offer love only toward certain people, excluding others.

JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

I should never have made my success in life if I had not bestowed upon the least thing
I have ever undertaken the same attention and care I have bestowed upon the greatest.

CHARLES DICKENS

What Happens to Most Pieces of Truth

One day Mara, the Buddhist god of ignorance and evil, was traveling through the villages of India
with his attendants. He saw a man doing walking meditation whose face was lit up in wonder.
The man had just discovered something on the ground in front of him. Mara's attendants asked
what that was and Mara replied, "A piece of truth." "Doesn't this bother you when someone finds
a piece of the truth, O evil one?" his attendants asked. "No," Mara replied. "Right after this
they usually make a belief out of it."

-Christina Feldman and Jack Kornfield, in Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart from Everyday Mind

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