This is one of the best Zen Quote collections I've come across. There is so much insight and wisdom packed in these little quotes.Sometimes just thinking about them for a while can make you understand things that no book or lecture has ever taught you. I'll just talk less and leave few of the quotes.Please visit the website and keep digging for more and most importantly, ponder on the meanings of these words. They can guide you to very far away and deep and transcending places.
In Zen, poetry is not a technology of language, but rather apractice of closing the gap between word and action so thatone may come to a point when word is will-manifest, wherereal and dream are no more discrete realms. The Zen poetthen ultimately concerns himself not with the skeletons of words but with shock, with riddle, and with the movementfrom head to entirety of being-in-body.
How boundless the cleared sky of Samadhi!How transparent the perfect moonlight of the Fourfold Wisdom!At this moment what more need we seek?As the Truth eternally reveals itself,This very place is the Lotus Land of Purity,This very body is the Body of the Buddha.
It is too clear and so it is hard to see.A dunce once searched for a fire with a lighted lantern.Had he known what fire was,He could have cooked his rice much sooner.
In this way and that I have tried to save the old pail Since the bamboo strip was weakening and about to break Until at last the bottom fell out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!
Two come about because of One, but don't cling to the One either! So long as the mind does not stir, the ten housand things stay blameless; no blame, no phenomena, no stirring, no mind. The viewer disappears along with the scene, the scene follows the viewer into oblivion, for scene becomes scene only through the viewer, viewer becomes viewer because of the scene.
Direct your eye right inward, and you'll find A thousand regions of your mind Yet undiscovered. Travel them and be Expert in home-cosmography.
To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand dharmas. To be enlightened by the ten thousand dharmas is to free one's body and mind and those of others. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this traceless enlightenment is continued forever.
The powerful tribal chief, Aaron, once told Shifu Miao Zhang that "Our tribe's god is very powerful and helps us defeat others. I once threw my staff on the ground and it turned into venomous snakes. Another time, I shook my staff in anger and made all the water in the wells and creeks turn into blood." Miao Zhang looked at Aaron and softly said, "I've used my cane to dig up roots to feed some hungry children. Fortunately, chief, our gentle gods mostly leave us alone."
That the self advances and confirms the ten thousand things is called delusion;That the ten thousand things advance and confirm the self is called enlightenment.
With thy perfect intelligence and compassionWhich are beyond all limit,Thou comprehends the egolessness of things and persons,And, art free and clear from the hindrances of passion and egoism.Thou do not vanish into Nirvana,Nor does Nirvana abide in thee,For Nirvana transcends all duality of knowing and known,Of being and non-being.Those who see thee thus,Serene and beyond conceptions,Will be emancipated from attachment,Will be cleansed of all defilement,Both in this world and in the spiritual world beyond.In this world, whose nature is like a dream,there is a place for praise and blame;But, in the ultimate Reality of the Dharmakaya,Which is far beyond the senses and the discriminating mind,What is there to praise?O Thou Most Wise!
You should know that such people will have planted good rootsWith not just one Buddha, two Buddhas, three, four or five Buddhas, But will have planted good roots with measureless millions of Buddhas. All who hear such phrases and produce even one thought Of pure faith are completely known and completely seen by the Tathagata. Such living beings thus obtain measureless blessings and virtue. And why? Those living beings have no further mark of self, of others, of living beings, Or of a life; No mark of dharmas and no mark of no dharmas. If your hearts grasp at marks, then that is attachment to self, to others, to living beings, and to a life. For that reason you should not grasp at dharmas, nor should you grasp at no dharmas. All you Bhiksus should know that the dharma which I speak is like a raft. Even dharmas should be relinquished, how much the more so no dharmas.
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