Sayings and Tales of Zen Buddhism

Zen enlightenment is as if you have been far away from home for many years, when you suddenly see your father in town. You know him right away without a doubt. There is no need to ask whether he is your father or not

When the ancient Zen master was asked about the meaning of Buddhism he replied, ‘If there is any meaning in it, I myself am not liberated.’

Always Zen is to be found, if at all, in immediate experience, the firefly rather than the star.

No one can live your life except you. No one can live my life except me. You are responsible. I am responsible. But what is our life? What is our death?

Where mind and each believing mind are not divided, and undivided are each believing mind and mind, this is where words fail; for it is not of the past, present and future.

In Buddhism the un-born is theundying. Life is a position of time. Death is a position of time. They are like winter and spring. We do not consider that winter becomes spring, or that spring becomes summer.

We sleep with both legs outstretched, free of the true, free of the false.

If people can change their viewpoints, can break up these age-old habits of thinking, can rid their minds of desires and infatuations and egoism, then the wisdom of true enlightenment is possible.

People are afraid to forget their ordinary, dualistic minds, fearing to fall through Emptiness with nothing to stay their fall. They do not know that Emptiness is not really empty, but the realm of the real way.

Ummon Bunen wanted his followers to be very clear and definite in what they were doing, and to illustrate this he said, ‘When you sit, sit; when you walk, walk. Above all, don’t wobble.’