A Zen Quote can be a guidance for someone who already practices Zen. For others, who would like to get into Zen meditation and practice, those quotes can give you an idea what Zen is about.
Not all of the people here are Zen masters or senseis on their own but they have a Zen mind. I tried to focus on some of the most important Zen quotes that I am aware of.
If you’d like to have a look at a more visual approach, you can also follow our instagram channel @thinktruenorth and find all 145 Zen quotes from this post there with their respective images.
Zen meditation and meditation, in general, can be beneficial for your well-being.
You can follow us there for even more mindset quotes. I’d be happy if you could share your favorit Zen quotes here with us!
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.
Thích Nhất Hạnh
Mind is like a mad monkey.
Sathya Sai Baba
Wherever you are, it’s the place you need to be.
Maxime Lagacé
Rest and be kind, you don’t have to prove anything.
Jack Kerouac
Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.
Pema Chödrön
Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.
Meister Eckhart
Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?
Zhuangzi
When we discover that the truth is already in us, we are all at once our original selves.
Dogen
Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.
Rumi
Wherever you are, be there totally.
Eckhart Tolle
I live by letting things happen.
Dogen
Zen is not some fancy, special art of living. Our teaching is just to live, always in reality, in its exact sense.
Shunryu Suzuki
Who you are is always right.
Ming-Dao Deng
We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.
Thích Nhất Hạnh
Do not seek the truth, only cease to cherish your opinions.
Seng-ts’an
Forget the years, forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home.
Zhuangzi
One loses joy and happiness in the attempt to possess them.
Masanobu Fukuoka
Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.
Buddha
Relax. Nothing’s missing.
Maxime Lagacé
Peace of mind is that mental condition in which you have accepted the worst.
Lin Yutang
Learn to be comfortable in adversity but most importantly, learn to be comfortable when you’re bored.
Maxime Lagacé
The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities.
Shunryu Suzuki
Relax. Nothing is under control.
Adi Da
The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands.
Robert M. Pirsig
Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.
Bruce Lee
Everything that happens to you is a form of instruction if you pay attention.
Robert Greene
I don’t mind what happens. That is the essence of inner freedom.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The less you try to impress, the more peaceful you can be.
Maxime Lagacé
The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear?
Lao Tzu
When one first seeks the truth, one separates oneself from it.
Dogen
Still your waters.
Josh Waitzkin
Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.
Alan Watts
Every experience is a lesson. Every loss is a gain.
Sathya Sai Baba
Zen is an effort to become alert and awake.
Osho
Zen teaches nothing; it merely enables us to wake up and become aware. It does not teach, it points.
D.T. Suzuki
Zen in it’s 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
In Zen we have no gurus.
Frederick Lenz
The true purpose of Zen is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes.
Shunryu Suzuki
Zen practice is to open up our small mind.
Shunryu Suzuki
Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.
Alan Watts
Zen is a path of liberation. It liberates you. It is freedom from the first step to the last. You are not required to follow any rules; you are required to find out your own rules and your own life in the light of awareness.
Osho
Zen is not an art, it’s not a religion. It’s a realization.
Gene Clark
To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.
Confucius
If you chase two rabbits, you catch none.
Confucius
Do not think you will necessarily be aware of your own enlightenment.
Dogen
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is a miracle.
Albert Einstein
Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.
Shunryu Suzuki
If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.
Dalai Lama
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.
Shunryu Suzuki
The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.
Robert M. Pirsig
Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.
Lao Tzu
A great man is hard on himself; a small man is hard on others.
Confucius
The first and the best victory is to conquer self.
Plato
All know the way, but few actually walk it.
Bodhidharma
The essence of the way is detachment.
Bodhidharma
The more you know, the less you need.
Yvon Chouinard
Life begins where fear ends.
Osho
Don’t be afraid to just sit and watch.
Anthony Bourdain
Your mind wants control. Life wants change.
Maxime Lagacé
Do not be too interested in Zen.
Shunryu Suzuki
Don’t try to steer the river.
Deepak Chopra
Be present above all else.
Naval Ravikant
Love all. Serve all. Help ever. Hurt never.
Sathya Sai Baba
To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.
Confucius
Don’t curse the darkness, light a candle.
Confucius
Those who seek the easy way do not seek the true way.
Dogen
A Zen master’s life is one continuous mistake.
Dogen
The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.
Confucius
Now I know what success is: living your truth, sharing it.
Kamal Ravikant
To live – is that not enough?
D.T. Suzuki
Zen has no business with ideas.
D.T. Suzuki
I follow four dictates: face it, accept it, deal with it, then let it go.
Sheng-yen
In the highest level a man has the look of knowing nothing.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo
Singlemindedness is all-powerful.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo
If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.
Sun Tzu
If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help someone else.
Confucius
Truth makes you rise to new heights, no matter where you are.
Kamal Ravikant
These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb.
Najwa Zebian
Little people try to control everything. Thus, they control nothing. Wise people focus on one thing, the most important, and let go of the rest.
Maxime Lagacé
Little people are overwhelmed by emotions. Zen people are calm and detached.
Maxime Lagacé
In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.
Sun Tzu
Purity is something that cannot be attained except by piling effort upon effort.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo
The three elements of creativity are thus: loving, knowing, and doing – or heart, mind, and hands – or, as Zen Buddhist teaching has it; great faith, great question, and great courage.
Eric Maisel
A man is great not because he hasn’t failed; a man is great because failure hasn’t stopped him.
Confucius
Have the fearless attitude of a hero and the loving heart of a child.
Soyen Shaku
My daily affairs are quite ordinary, but I’m in total harmony with them.
Layman Pang
Your mind is a mad monkey trying to understand life which is unfair and crazy. Get used to it.
Maxime Lagacé
I don’t hold on to anything, don’t reject anything; nowhere an obstacle or conflict.
Layman Pang
We just let it happen… and that’s the beauty of this technique.
Bob Ross
Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing.
Lao Tzu
The feeling that any task is a nuisance will soon disappear if it is done in mindfulness.
Thích Nhất Hạnh
Only when you can be extremely pliable and soft can you be extremely hard and strong.
Zen Proverb
Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.
Shunryu Suzuki
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
The basic principles of Zen teachings are to relax and be at utmost peace with oneself. “Zen is not effort. Effort is tension, effort is work, and effort is to achieve something. Zen is not something to achieve. You are already that. Just relax, relax so deeply that you become a revelation to yourself.
Zen Proverb
Throughout this life, you can never be certain of living long enough to take another breath.
Huang Po
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 Quote
When thoughts arise, then do all things arise. When thoughts vanish, then do all things vanish.
Huang Po
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
To accept some idea of truth without experiencing it is like a painting of a cake on paper which you cannot eat.
Suzuki Roshi
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
Smile, breathe and go slowly.
Thích Nhất Hạnh
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 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
All that we are, is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become.
Buddha
If you realize you have enough, you are truly rich.
Lao Tzu
The most important point is to accept yourself and stand on your two feet.
Shunryu Suzuki
Act without expectation.
Lao Tzu
Love is the absence of judgment.
Dalai Lama
To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.
Thích Nhất Hạnh
Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
Alan Watts
Self-realization is effortless. What you are trying to find is what you already are.
Ramesh Balsekar
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
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
Wisdom says we are nothing. Love says we are everything. Between these two our life flows.
Jack Kornfield
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
Nothing ever exists entirely alone. Everything is in relation to everything else.
Buddha
If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.
Lao Tzu
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
Respect life, revere life. There is nothing more holy than life, nothing more divine than life.
Zen Proverb
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!
Thích Nhất Hạnh
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 present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.
Thích Nhất Hạnh
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
And when they played they really played. And when they worked they really worked.
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
Even if it seems certain that you will lose, retaliate. Neither wisdom nor technique has a place in this. A real man does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death. By doing this, you will awaken from your dreams.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo
Book recommendations for more Zen Quote
- Zen Mind, Beginners Mind by Shunryu Suzuki is not without reason named one of the 100 best spiritual books of the twentieth century.
- Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai by Yamamoto Tsunetomo is one of the most accessible, toroughly translated martial arts texts that teaches a lot about the mindset of legendary Japanese warriors.
- The Art of War by Sun Tzu is by far more than an ancient Chinese military text. It’s about behavior in battles but also about to win and what mindset is important for you.
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert Pirsig is a great novel about an unfergettable summer motorcycle trip. It’s one of the most exciting books in the history of letters.
