85 Zen Quotes, Sayings and Wisdom Words
Looking for Zen Wisdom Words? Here are my favorite Zen quotes and sayings that will help to encourage you to open your mind and think differently about the difficulties. These will ease your mind and make it calm.
Zen Quotes
- “When you sit, everything sits with you.” – Shunryu Suzuki
- “Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.” – Alan Watts
- “If you are exploring truth of life, explore the present moment. Living in the present moment is the only truth of life.” – Invajy
- “Zen is an effort to become alert and awake.” – Osho
- “When you realize nothing is lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” – Lao Tzu
- “To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is.” – Thich Nhat Hạnh
- “Accept the awful happenings of life; you will find the truths of life.” – Invajy
- “Mind is like a mad monkey.” – Sathya Sai Baba
- “Each morning, we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.” – Buddha
- “Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.” – Jack Kornfield
Zen Buddhism Quotes
- “Throughout this life, you can never be certain of living long enough to take another breath.” – Huang Po
- “Rest and be kind, you don’t have to prove anything.” – Jack Kerouac
- “Awareness is the greatest agent for change.”– Eckhart Tolle
- “The practice of Zen is forgetting the self in the act of uniting with something.”– Koun Yamada
- “Let go, or be dragged.” – Zen Proverb
- “When thoughts arise, then do all things arise. When thoughts vanish, then do all things vanish.” – Huang Po
- “Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.” – Meister Eckhart
- “The noble-minded are calm and steady. Little people are forever fussing and fretting.” – Confucius
- “All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.” – Eckhart Tolle
- “Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?” – Zhuangzi
Zen Inspiring Short Quotes
- “Act without expectation.” – Lao Tzu
- Smile, breathe and go slowly. – Thich Nhat Hahn
- “Love is the absence of judgment.” – Dalai Lama
- “All know the way, but few actually walk it.” – Bodhidharma
- “I live by letting things happen.” – Dogen
- “There is no mistake in nature.” – Byron Katie
- “To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss.” – Bodhidharma
- “The real meditation is how you live your life.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn
- “If you realize you have enough, you are truly rich.” – Lao Tzu
- “The feeling that any task is a nuisance will soon disappear if it is done in mindfulness.” – Thich Nhat Hahn
Famous Zen Quotes
- “Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.” – Rumi
- “The most important point is to accept yourself and stand on your two feet.” – Shunryu Suzuki
- “Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.” – Shunryu Suzuki
- “Self-realization is effortless. What you are trying to find is what you already are.”- Ramesh Balsekar
- “Forget the years, forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home.” – Zhuangzi
- “Wise men don’t judge – they seek to understand.” – Wei Wu Wei
- “One must be deeply aware of the impermanence of the world.”– Dogen
- “Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.”– Alan Watts
- “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” – Lao Tzu
- “Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer.” – Shunryu Suzuki
Popular Zen Quotes
- “To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.” – Thich Nhat Hahn
- “Wisdom says we are nothing. Love says we are everything. Between these two our life flows.” – Jack Kornfield
- “Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.” – Buddha
- “As a bee gathering nectar does not harm or disturb the color and fragrance of the flower; so do the wise move through the world.” – Buddha
- “All that we are, is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become.” – Buddha
- “When I feel like dancing, I dance. I don’t care if anyone else is dancing or if everyone else is laughing at me. I dance.”– Rachel Danson
- “What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.”– Confucius
- “Have good trust in yourself … not in the One that you think you should be, but in the One that you are.” – Maezumi Roshi
- “When we discover that the truth is already in us, we are all at once our original selves.” – Dogen
- “Only when you can be extremely pliable and soft can you be extremely hard and strong.”– Zen Proverb
Quotes about Zen
- “To accept some idea of truth without experiencing it is like a painting of a cake on paper which you cannot eat.” – Suzuki Roshi
- “Learning the art of unlearning and replacing old learning with a new learning is the true learning.” – Invajy
- “The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.”– Ram Dass
- Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace. – Dalai Lama
- Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them. – Dalai Lama
- “Nothing ever exists entirely alone. Everything is in relation to everything else.”– Buddha
- “To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.” – Confucius
- “If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. And, if you are at peace, you are living in the present.” – Lao Tzu
- “The essence of the Way is detachment.” – Bodhidharma
- “Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.” – Dalai Lama
Inspirational Zen Quotes
- “Respect life, revere life. There is nothing more holy than life, nothing more divine than life.” – Anonymous
- “Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear?” – Lao Tzu
- “This dew like life fades away; time speeds swiftly. In this short life of ours, avoid involvement in superfluous things and just study the Way.” – Dōgen Zenji
- “If you miss the present moment, you miss your appointment with life. That is very serious!” – Thich Nhat Hanh
- “Leave your front door and your back door open. Allow your thoughts to come and go.” – Shunryu Suzuki
- “At the still-point in the center of the circle one can see the infinite in all things.”– Chuang Tzu
- “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” – Buddha
- “Surrender to what is. Let go of what was. Have faith in what will be.” – Sonia Ricotti
- “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.” – Eric Hoffer
- “The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.” – Thich Nhat Hahn
Best Zen Quotes
- “What day is it?” asked Pooh. “It’s today,” squeaked Piglet. “My favourite day,” said Pooh. – A. A Milne
- “When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.”– Shunryu Suzuki
- “Do not follow the idea of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself.” – Dōgen Zenji
- “If you chase two rabbits, you catch none.” – Confucius
- “And when they played they really played. And when they worked they really worked.” – Dr. Seuss
- “Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.” – Prema Chödrön
- “Mindfulness isn’t difficult, we just need to remember to do it.” – Sharon Salzberg
- “Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.” – Confucius
- “Peace of mind is that mental condition in which you have accepted the worst.” – Lin Yutang
- “Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.” – Shunryu Suzuki
Zen Quotes
- “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
- “In Zen we have no gurus.” – Frederick Lenz
- “Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.” – Alan Watts
- “Zen teaches nothing; it merely enables us to wake up and become aware. It does not teach, it points.” – D.T. Suzuki
- “To study Buddhism is to study ourselves. To study ourselves is to forget ourselves.” – Dogen
