Typical of Eastern culture, Zen proverbs place the emphasis on how important the meditation of each individual is, they are phrases and aphorisms to help everyone live their lives in a conscious way, actively participating in the world.
Zen aphorisms
- The only Zen that you find on top of the mountains is the Zen you bring up there.
- A man is great not because he avoided bankruptcies; a man is great because his failures have not stopped him.
- My Zen master also said that the only way to be happy is to live the present without worrying about the future: obviously he died poor and single.
- There are only two ways in which it is possible to live: one is as if nothing is a miracle, the other is as everything is a miracle.
- This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; there is no need for complicated philosophies. Our own mind, our own heart is our temple; philosophy is kindness.
- The real purpose of Zen is to see things as they are, observe things as they are, and let everything go as it goes.
- In Japanese daily life, Zen is practiced as a cult of useless action.
- The practice of Zen is the art of forgetting yourself in the act of joining something.
- Yin is the shady side of the mountain. It is introversion, darkness, introspection, hardness and death.
- Zen is in its essence the art of seeing within the nature of one's being, and aims at the path from ties to freedom.
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- To be creative, you have to melt. So we enter Zen, because the essential motto of Zen is to let go of our moorings, to free ourselves.
- Zen is an effort to become alert and aware.
- In Zen meditation the flow of thoughts is free to flow, without any predetermined direction.
- Everything that happens to you is a way to educate yourself, if you pay attention to it.
- Doing one thing at a time is the essence of Zen. Doing one thing at a time means being total in what you do, it means giving your attention completely to what you do. This is an action in surrendering, an action of power.
- If you are depressed, it is because you live in the past. If you are anxious, it is because you live in the future. If you are at peace, it is because you live in the present moment.
- Zen is your daily thought.
- The place to improve the world is first of all in our heart, in our mind and in our hands.
- Yang is intelligence, movement, prosperity, excitement, new beginnings, softness, spring and summer, birth. She.
- Rest and be at peace, you don't have to prove anything to anyone.
- The more empty space you can create within yourself, the more the outside world will be able to fill that void.
- The pursuit of happiness is one of the main reasons for unhappiness.
- Zen is a kind of upside down education, a kind of procedure for unlearning. It teaches you how to abandon everything you have learned, how to become ignorant again, how to become a child again, how to start existing again without the help of the mind, how to be present without the mind.
- Nothing goes away before we taught us what we needed to know.
Zen phrases
- The nature of the Buddha is in you, everywhere in your body, in your cells.
- I live by letting things happen.
Bodhidharma was once asked to give a definition of Zen. And he, in contravention of the spirit of his teaching, replied thus: 'It is a special transmission outside the scriptures, it is independent of words and letters, it points directly to the spirit of man, it is to contemplate one's own nature'.
- When you understand that nothing is missing, the whole world belongs to you.
- All Zen deals with is how to make ordinary life a blessing.
- If you have a glass full of liquid you can talk about its quality forever, discuss if it is hot or cold, if it is really composed of hydrogen and oxygen, or it is mineral water or fresh water. Meditation is drinking water.
- Always talking about Zen is like looking for the footprints of fish in the bed of a dry stream.
- I met the sea meditating on a drop of dew.
- Fight with all extraneous thoughts. Keep your mind on what you are doing, both externally and internally.
- Acting without intention is cultivated in Zen.
- The mind is the root from which everything is born. If you can understand the mind, other things are understood.
- The secret of life is to die young, but as late as possible.
- When the mind stops moving, it enters nirvana. Nirvana is an empty mind.
- The more you know, the less things you need.
- When the common man understands he becomes wise, when the wise man understands he becomes a common man.
- Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walk, sit or lie down, all you do is Zen.
- You will not be punished for your anger; it will be your anger itself to punish you.
- Fall seven times; get up eight times.
- Don't look for the truth, but stop messing around with opinions.
- The more you give to others the richer you are; the wise man does not accumulate possession.
- Our life is the tool through which we experiment with the truth.
- Friendship and love do not ask themselves like water, but offer themselves like tea.
- Walking is also Zen, sitting is also Zen. Whether you speak or remain silent, move or stand still, the body always remains at peace.
- Life and death are of supreme importance. Time passes quickly before an opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Wake up! Be careful, don't waste your life.
Zen proverbs
- Return is the movement of the way. Weakness is the practice of the way.
- Only the hand that erases is capable of writing the real things.
- The whole experience of the Buddha lies in the fact that everything changes and nothing is stable.
- If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
- A good deed does not involve reward.
- Live without expectations. Facing life with expectations inevitably leads to frustration, always and in any case.
- There is no way to achieve happiness. Happiness is the way.
- If you understand one thing in its entirety, you can understand everything.
- Buddha is the one who finds freedom in good and bad luck.
- The moment you talk about something, it escapes you.
- Zen is a kind of upside down education, a kind of procedure for unlearning. It teaches you how to abandon everything you have learned, how to become ignorant again, how to become a child again, how to start existing again without the help of the mind, how to be present without the mind.
- When something comes from within, when it is part of you, you have no choice but to live it, to express it.
- Zen is your daily thought.
- I have lived with many Zen masters; they were all cats.
- Everything changes, nothing remains without change.
- You can never call the wind, but you can leave the window open.
- How to define meditation? Like wisdom in search of wisdom.
- Use your silent determination, without any thought, to convince yourself that you have reached your energy body and that you are a dreamer.
- If you do even a true meditation you know forever that there is nothing better. The rest is ignorance, worry and mental unease.
- A wise man learns from a foolish question more than a fool can learn from a wise answer.
- To be creative, you have to melt. So we enter Zen, because the essential motto of Zen is to let go of our moorings, to free ourselves.
- Who is capable does not argue, who argues is not capable.
- There is no meditation without wisdom, and there is no wisdom without meditation. When a man has meditated and is wise, then he is really close to Nirvana.
- Few things, but well matured.
- Meditation is not an escape but a serene encounter with reality.
- Treat even a single green leaf in such a way that it manifests the body of the Buddha. This in turn will allow the Buddha to manifest through the leaf.
