Art always has something of the unconscious about it.
Facts of experience are valued in Zen more than representations, symbols, and concepts-that is to say, substance is everything in Zen and form nothing.
Zen wants us to acquire an entirely new point of view whereby to look into the mysteries of life and the secrets of nature. This is because Zen has come to the definite conclusion that the ordinary logical process of reasoning is powerless to give final satisfaction to our deepest spiritual needs.
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.
Dhyana is retaining one’s tranquil state of mind in any circumstance, unfavorable as well as favorable, and not being disturbed or frustrated even when adverse conditions present themselves one after another.
The claim of the Zen followers that they are transmitting the essence of Buddhism is based on their belief that Zen takes hold of the enlivening spirit of the Buddha, stripped of all its historical and doctrinal garments.
One has not understood until one has forgotten it.
Zen has nothing to teach us in the way of intellectual analysis; nor has it any set doctrines which are imposed on its followers for acceptance.
We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.
When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect the mountain exercises vanishes into the air.
Fundamentally the marksman aims at himself.
The mistake consists in our splitting into two what is really and absolutely one. Is not life one as we live it, which we cut to pieces by recklessly applying the murderous knife of intellectual surgery?
When a thing is denied, the very denial involves something not denied.
The way to ascend unto God is to descend into one’s self”; – these are Hugo’s words. “If thou wishest to search out the deep things of God, search out the depths of thine own spirit”;.
How hard, then, and yet how easy it is to understand Zen! Hard because to understand it is not to understand it; easy because not to understand it is to understand it.
However insistently the blind may deny the existence of the sun, they cannot annihilate it.
Zen has nothing to do with letters, words, or sutras.
Zen perceives and feels, and does not abstract and meditate. Zen penetrates and is finally lost in the immersion. Meditation, on the other hand, is outspokenly dualistic and consequently inevitably superficial.
The basic idea of Zen is to come in touch with the inner workings of our being, and to do so in the most direct way possible, without resorting to anything external or superadded.
Taking it all in all, Zen is emphatically a matter of personal experience; if anything can be called radically empirical, it is Zen. No amount of reading, no amount of teaching, no amount of contemplation will ever make one a Zen master. Life itself must be grasped in the midst of its flow; to stop it for examination and analysis is to kill it, leaving its cold corpse to be embraced.