© Silver Lining Of Your Cloud 2014
Silver Lining Of Your Cloud
Life Quotes and Sayings
Zen
Zen: Seeing into one’s own nature. ~Hui-Neng
I’d like to offer something to help you but in the zen school we don’t have a
single thing! ~Ikkyu
Entering the forest, he does not disturb a blade of grass. Entering the water,
he does not make a ripple. ~Zen saying
When you pass through,
no one can pin you down,
no one can call you back.
~Ying-An
Whether talking or remaining silent, Whether moving or standing quiet, The
Essence itself is ever at ease. ~Daishi
There is one thing you can always rely on: life being as it is. ~Charlotte Joko
Beck
The secret is just to say “Yes!” and jump off from there. ~Shunryu Suzuki
Life, according to Zen, ought to be lived as a bird flies through the air, or as a
fish swims in the water. ~D. T. Suzuki
Everything the same; everything distinct. ~Wu-Men
Still music
Quiet sound
Deep water
Silent ground
~C. Alexander & Annellen Simpkins
To be enlightened is to be intimate with all things. ~Dogen
Do not permit the events of your daily life to bind you, but never withdraw
yourself from them. ~Wu-Men
There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can
think that is not the moon. ~Basho
Zen in its essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one’s being, and it
points the way from bondage to freedom. ~D. T. Suzuki
The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you
are out there. ~Yasutani Roshi
A tenth of an inch’s difference, and heaven and earth are set apart. ~Chinese
Zen saying
Real Practice has orientation or direction, but it has no purpose or gaining
idea, so it can include everything that comes. ~Shunryu Suzuki
A noble heart never forces itself forward. Its words are as rare gems, seldom
displayed and of great value. ~Wu-Men
Life is like stepping onto a boat that is about to sail out to sea and sink.
~Shunryu Suzuki
Those who see worldly life as an obstacle to Dharma see no Dharma in
everyday actions. They have not yet discovered that there are no everyday
actions outside of Dharma. ~Dogen
You stick to naturalness too much. When you stick to it, it is not natural
anymore. ~Shunryu Suzuki
We have two eyes to see two sides of things, but there must be a third eye
which will see everything at the same time and yet not see anything. That is
to understand Zen. ~D. T. Suzuki
Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.
~Ryokan
To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by
the ten thousand things. ~Dogen
What I tell you is not [a] secret. The secret is in you. ~Hui-Neng
As long as you seek for something, you will get the shadow of reality and not
reality itself. ~Shunryu Suzuki
People are scared to empty their minds fearing that they will be engulfed by
the void. What they don’t realize is that their own mind is the void. ~Huang-
Po
In zazen leave your front door and your back door open. Let thoughts come
and go. Just don’t serve them tea. ~Shunryu Suzuki
Ten thousand flowers in spring; the moon in autumn; a cool breeze in
summer; snow in winter. If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life. ~Wu-Men
Open your mouth, and you’re wrong. ~Zen Proverb
When you are deluded and full of doubt, even a thousand books of scripture
are not enough.
When you have realized understanding, even one word is too much.
~Feng-Yang
There is no beginning to practice nor end to enlightenment; There is no
beginning to enlightenment nor end to practice. ~Dogen
Let us be respectfully reminded: Life and death are of supreme importance.
Time swiftly passes by, and with it, our only chance. Each of us must aspire
to awaken. Be aware. Do not squander our life. ~Charlotte Joko Beck
If you seek, how is that different from pursuing sound and form? If you don’t
seek, how are you different from earth, wood or stone? You must seek
without seeking. ~Fo-Yan
Ordinary life and Buddhahood have no distinction. ~Paoh Chih
Have good trust in yourself — not in the One that you think you should be,
but in the One that you are. ~Maezumi Roshi
Cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words, and
following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light
inward to illuminate your self. Body and mind of themselves will drop away,
and your original face will be manifest.~Dogen
Zen is a way of liberation, concerned not with discovering what is good or
bad or advantageous, but what is. ~Alan Watts
This is the Zen approach: nothing is there to be done. There is nothing to do.
One has just to be. Have a rest and be ordinary and be natural. ~Osho
If you love the sacred and hate the secular, you’ll float and sink in the birth-
and-death sea. The passions exist dependent on mind: have no-mind, and how
can they bind you? ~Rinzai
Everything the same; everything distinct. ~Zen saying
Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is
peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. ~Alan Watts
Here it is–right now. Start thinking about it and you miss it. ~Huang-Po
If you try to aim for it, you are turning away from it. ~Zen master
Look upon the body as unreal, an image in a mirror, the reflection of the
moon in water. Contemplate the mind as formless, yet bright and pure. Not a
single thought arising, empty, yet perceptive; still, yet illuminating; complete
like the Great Emptiness, containing all that is wonderful. ~Han Shan Te
Ch’ing
Zen is the unsymbolization of the world. ~R.H. Blyth
Outside of Poetry there is no Zen.
~Ten’in Ryutaku
You cannot avoid paradise. You can only avoid seeing it. ~Charlotte Joko
Beck
Zen is like looking for spectacles that are sitting on your nose. ~Zen Saying
The Great Way is not difficult. It only avoids picking and choosing. ~Hsin
Hsin Ming
In the scenery of spring, nothing is better, nothing worse; The flowering
branches are of themselves, some short, some long. ~Zen unknown
I come to realize that mind is no other than mountains and rivers and the
great wide earth, the sun and the moon and stars. ~Dogen
Like the empty sky it has no boundaries, yet it is right in this place, ever
profound and clear. When you seek to know it, you cannot see it. You cannot
take hold of it, but you cannot lose it. In not being able to get it, you get it.
When you are silent, it speaks; when you speak, it is silent. The great gate is
wide open to bestow alms, and no crowd is blocking the way. ~Cheng-tao Ke
Ears hear and eyes see, what then does mind do? ~Zen saying
An inch of time is an inch of gold: Treasure it. Appreciate its fleeting nature;
misplaced gold is easily found, misspent time is lost forever. ~Loy Ching-
Yuen
A primary aim of Zen is the uncovering of what is known as inherent
knowledge. This is not the kind of knowledge that is produced by thinking
based on conditioned consciousness. It is said that the ignorant are obstructed
by ignorance, while intellectuals are obstructed by intellectual knowledge.
One way of getting past these obstacles and approaching inherent knowledge
is to let go of whatever comes to mind. ~Muso Kokushi
Confused by thoughts, we experience duality in life. Unencumbered by ideas,
the enlightened see the one Reality. ~Hui-Neng
Seek not to follow in the footsteps of men of old; seek what they sought.
~Matsuo Basho
When you are deluded and full of doubt, even a thousand books of scripture
are not enough. When you have realized understanding, even one word is too
much. ~Fen-Yang
The true person is
Not anyone in particular;
But, like the deep blue color
Of the limitless sky,
It is everyone, everywhere in the world.
~Dogen
A monk asked Master Haryo, “What is the way?” Haryo said, “An open-eyed
man falling into the well. ~Zen Kōan
Having no destination, I am never lost. ~Ikkyuu
The true purpose is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are,
and to let everything go as it goes. ~Shunryu Suzuki
If you look for the truth outside yourself, it gets farther and farther away.
Today, walking alone, I meet him everywhere I step. He is the same as me,
yet I am not him. Only if you understand it in this way will you merge with
the way things are. ~Tung-Shan
Being straightforward, being direct, being honest, telling it like it is … We
call it ruthless compassion. ~Zen Master Merzel
Truth is not far away; it is ever present. It is not something to be attained,
since not one of your steps leads away from it. ~Dogen
The menu is not the meal. ~Alan Watts
Learn how to listen as things speak for themselves. ~Basho
But opinions, judgments, memories, dreaming about the future—ninety
percent of the thoughts spinning around in our heads have no essential reality.
~Charlotte J. Beck
The beauty of Zen is found in simplicity and tranquility, in a sense of the all-
embracing harmony of things. ~Thich Thien-An
Let your ears hear without trying to hear. Let the mind think without trying to
think and without trying to stop it. ~Shunryu Suzuki
The real way circulates everywhere;
how could it require
practice or enlightenment?
The essential teaching is fully available;
how could effort be necessary?
Furthermore, the entire mirror is
free of dust; why take steps to polish it?
Nothing is separate from this
very place; why journey away?
~Dogen
To each thing, its own
true deepest inner nature:
water does not think
of itself as consort
of the bright moonlight it hosts.
~Sogi