Zen has lost its zip, if you will, or its nothingness and has become ritualistic Its established in monastaries with strict codes of koan study.
Old Zen is the way of nothingness, the way of having a good time.
Old Zen was very funny; there was a great deal of humor and happiness. Zen today seems much drier. While there's a certain amount of humor, it seems to lack that total intensity because humor is one of the primary tools for liberation.
Old Zen was the reduction of concepts to absurdity.
Different schools of Zen have evolved, principally the Rinzai and Soto orders. A whole hierarchy has developed for the teaching and practice of Zen. Zen has become, to a certain degree, institutionalized.
If you're very, very conservative and you like that sort of practice, go find a very conservative Zen master and just do traditional Japanese practice, which is not that traditional actually.
It is only in the last 800 years that the rules have come into being and conservative Zen has surfaced. It is not particularly popular in Japan at all. Hardly anybody practices Zen any more because it's just too strict; there are too many rules.
If you're very liberal, then you should go and find a very liberal Zen teacher, a liberal interpretation of the doctrines of the Soto or Rinzai schools.
Zen is a study. It's a discipline. It involves the active use of will to make things happen or not happen. These are the secrets of power.
The path of Zen is not easy. It's wonderful. It's beautiful beyond compare. You will experience more ecstasy and beauty than most people will in a thousand lifetimes.
Meditation is the way the mind is. That's why in Zen they call it the natural state, which means you don't have to go and do anything to meditate.
The light is already there. In Zen Buddhism there's a little speck of dust on the mirror, and that's us.
In Zen you practice zazen, mindfulness and other forms of introspection to find out who you are and what you want, to balance your spirit, develop willpower, increase your sense of humor and gain wisdom.
In Zen there is a sense of blending, of stepping out of your body and mind and gaining access to powers and abilities that are far beyond the minds of mortal men.
In Zen we study the will. We learn how to cultivate it, to accumulate will. We use it to direct our actions, and we don't overuse it or abuse it - that's a waste.
The study of Zen is the study of energy, power, knowledge and balance. It is the science of energy conservation and control. We use energy to aid others, to see beauty, to discover love where we saw no love at all.
The way of nothingness is the way of Zen. It is just a term. The contemplation of nothingness or everythingness is where everything starts.
The theory of Zen is non-competition. But that is not really true at all. People who practice Zen are very competitive. They are competing against emptiness.
Zen is the path that focuses the most upon meditation. It is almost exclusively a path of meditation.
You can only conceive of what lies beyond the state of mind you are in from the point of view of the state of mind you are in.
In Zen you are learning how to make new realities, to build things inside your mind.
There are ten thousand planes of awareness within the infinite mind of the diamond mind, your deeper mind.
The ten thousand states of mind that we talk about in Zen are all levels of perception. You can think of each of the ten thousand states of mind as a dimensional plane.
Beyond the ten thousand states of mind is the still point. It exists within them all, yet beyond them. It is not affected by them. It gives birth to them. This is the riddle.
The ten thousand states of mind are hallucinatory. Hallucinations are real. Dreams are real. But there are some things more real.
