Browsing Topic Best Zen Master Quotes

As the Japanese Zen masters say, Don’t seek the truth; just drop your opinions. Drop your theories; don’t seek the truth.

How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb? The plum tree in the garden!

Don’t seek the truth; just drop your opinions.

I’ve been in these tabloids for 14 years now, and at some point you just become a Zen master of it all

This building we’re in has doors and windows. If we close the doors and windows, we can’t get out. People lock themselves inside a house of delusions. But they’re only delusions. They can leave anytime. Actually there is no house to leave. There’s not even any leaving. What we see are flowers in the sky, the moon in the water. As for the meditative powers of Zen masters like Hsu-yun, sometimes it’s useful to meditate and sometimes it isn’t.

What are you, Zen Master Fang?

Until today, it really pissed me off that I’d become this totally centered Zen Master and nobody had noticed. Still, I’m doing the little FAX thing. I write little HAIKU things and FAX them around to everyone. When I pass people in the hall at work, I get totally ZEN right in everyone’s hostile little FACE.

The Zen master walks in his garden, alone. There is no traffic there. There is no shopping there. There are only the flowers.

I’m a Zen Master. I’m an occult teacher. I teach people how to become that, how to be perfect.

Zen is not a religion. There is no room for a cult. There is no dependence on a teacher. There is only learning how to use your own mind and making it strong.

If we had the consciousness of a cat or a dog, we would have it in us to become perfect Zen masters. We could gnaw on a bone, take a nap, play with a spider until we killed it, get our litter just right, and be innocently and serenely present. Meaning would mean nothing to us, nor would we need it to mean anything. We would be free, and we would be spared. But, we are human beings, and we posses that odd duck – human consciousness.

Deluded beings think that if they get in a battle with a Zen Master or with a Don Juan, that it’s going enhance their life if they win. You can never take power from someone else any more than you can take sunlight.

If you’re very, very conservative and you like that sort of practice, go find a very conservative Zen master and just do traditional Japanese practice, which is not that traditional actually.

The teaching of the ten thousand states of mind, particularly as one advances further, is done through transmission. This is where we differ from teaching algebra or calculus.

The majority of the ten thousand states of mind cannot be discussed. It is rather a question of teaching a person to step outside the conceptual framework they have and transmitting blocks of awareness to an individual psychically.

The Zen master can see precisely what it will take to cause your awareness to become free. But the Zen master can’t do it for you.

Zen masters say you cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water.

If you want to travel the Way of Buddhas and Zen masters, then expect nothing, seek nothing, and grasp nothing.

You’re not listening to the Zen master, what he is saying outwardly, but even more importantly…what he is saying inwardly.

There is really only one Zen Master … and that’s yourself.

We throw you as many as you want, in this profession, and the more you want the more we’ll give you, until you’re so confused that you’ll just beg for us to stop. Stop what? You’re the one who started it – you’re doing it anyway.

A Zen master is someone whose life is one with enlightenment and self-discovery. They can never be separated from that. They’ve been essentially mastered by Zen.

When I go visit my brother monks in Japan and sit down with other Zen Masters, they look at my crazy clothes and my strange expression, but they feel the power that emanates from my dedication to the practice. So they are comfortable with me, yet they’re very uncomfortable.

If the Zen master sees that it will cause a person to progress, he will ask that person to do a task. The task is charged with power if it’s performed properly. It’s a koan between yourself and the Zen Master.

I have lived with several Zen masters — all of them cats.

Naturally, the Zen Master Rama philosophy is to have a high state of awareness and material success.

We call it the transmission of the lamp in Zen. That’s when we take enlightened states of mind and literally, you can transfer them, just like you can hand somebody flowers.

The Zen Master was constantly attempting to break up concepts that people had about what it was like to be a spiritual teacher. We have a traditional image. Each Zen master was a complete character.

The teacher is transmitting pure awareness and consciousness.

A master of an art is someone who’s been mastered by the art. They’ve become so one with what they teach that you can’t tell the teacher from the student.

Everyone needs a spiritual guide: a minister, rabbi, counselor, wise friend, or therapist. My own wise friend is my dog. He has deep knowledge to impart. He makes friends easily and doesn’t hold a grudge. He enjoys simple pleasures and takes each day as it comes. Like a true Zen master he eats when he is hungry and sleeps when he is tired. He’s not hung up about sex. Best of all, he befriends me with an unconditional love that human beings would do well to imitate.

What is Tantric Zen? Well, I don’t think I can give you a straight answer, since I don’t happen to be a very straight Zen master.

In Zen we have no gurus.

A zen master’s life is one continuous mistake.

You have to begin to develop a repertory of jokes, multi-plane spiritual jokes, the sort of things the Zen masters tell each other when they’re asleep. These are the secret teachings.