Most of the time, something as simple as reading, understanding, and listening to the right motivational zen quotes can make all of the difference in the quality of your life and day-to-day habits. If you are looking for some inspirational and peaceful Zen quotes that will help you calm your mind, then we have a collection of 70 outstanding zen quotes for you to consider and live by.
Related: 100 Mindfulness Quotes to Live in The Present Moment
Table of Contents
What Zen Quotes Can Do for You?
We are about to divulge into the 70 of our favorite Zen quotes, and these zen quotes are very important because they can help you put your life in perspective while questioning the key areas of your life. These zen quotes can help encourage you to open your mind, think differently and mindfully about the difficulties that you face, and even in finding the inner strength and focus to keep your anxious and stressed mind at ease.
How to Use Zen Quotes to Your Advantage?
If you are here on this platform, then you have taken the very first step towards a mindful life. We all want to have some motivation to go about our days mindfully and we all are seeking inspirational Zen quotes for our reference, but how do you use them to your advantage?
What I recommend is to make a list of your favorite zen quotes and try putting your favorite zen quotes up somewhere where you can see them every day like maybe in the mirror of your bathroom, or on a sticky note, or you can also try writing a different Zen quote in your planner for every day or every week.
The key here is consistency with exposing yourself to these Zen quotes and constantly making sure you are not only reading these quotes but thinking about journaling and about what they mean to you.
Finding Your Zen?
ZEN IS ABOUT QUESTIONING. Zen continuously questions. But, zen questioning does not necessarily involve finding answers, it does involve finding a space in which to sustain questioning, being willing to remain present and upright in the middle of questions.
To persevere in Zen practice requires faith, but not a fundamentalist, literalist faith that merely believes in some easily digestible dogma or relies on some external being to provide answers and tell us how to live.
Zen faith is alive, with the willingness and readiness to persist in questioning. Of course, at times insights and responses appear, sometimes more frequently as we settle into the open spaciousness of meditation. But if the answers are worthy they allow more questions or they help foster readiness for the new questions offered by the world, our life, and by our insights.
This platform offers questions and provokes more questions, and hopefully may encourage the willingness to question, thereby supporting more creative, open awareness.
Also Read: The Most Widely Practiced Types of Meditation
70 Zen Quotes to Calm Your Mind
Hereby below-mentioned you will find a list of 70 Zen quotes that are designed to help you calm and ease your mind.
- When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself. – Shunryu Suzuki
- And when they played they played. And when they worked they worked. – Dr. Seuss
- One must be deeply aware of the impermanence of the world. – Dogen
- The practice of Zen is forgetting the self in the act of uniting with something. – Koun Yamada
- All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness. – Eckhart Tolle
- Have good trust in yourself … not in the One that you think you should be, but in the One that you are. – Maezumi Roshi
- Have the fearless attitude of a hero and the loving heart of a child. – Soyen Shaku
- Life isn’t as serious as the mind makes it out to be. – Eckhart Tolle
- Let go over a cliff, die completely, and then come back to life — after that, you cannot be deceived. – Zen Proverb
- 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
- Only when you can be extremely pliable and soft can you be extremely hard and strong. – Zen Proverb
- Upon retiring, sleep as if you had entered your last sleep. Upon awakening, leave your bed behind you instantly as if you had cast away a pair of old shoes. – Soyen Shaku
- 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
- If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it? – Dogen
- Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone. – Alan Watts
- 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
- To accept some idea of truth without experiencing it is like a painting of a cake on paper that you cannot eat. – Suzuki Roshi
- It boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. – Martin Luther King, Jr.
- To follow the path, look to the master, follow the master, walk with the master, see through the master, become the master. – Zen Proverb
- The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering. – Ram Dass
- For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them. – Thích Nhat Hanh
- Watch what you say, and whatever you say, practice it. – Soyen Shaku
- Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine. – Shunryu Suzuki
- Nothing ever exists entirely alone. Everything is concerning everything else. – Buddha
- Think with your whole body. – Taisen Deshimar
- When you realize nothing is lacking, the whole world belongs to you. -Lao Tzu
- Let go, or be dragged. -Zen proverb
- What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others. –Confucius
- To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss. –Bodhidharma
- Mind is like a mad monkey. -Sathya Sai Baba
- Wise men don’t judge – they seek to understand. -Wei Wu Wei
- When thoughts arise, then do all things arise. When thoughts vanish, then do all things vanish. -Huang Po
- Wherever you are, it’s the place you need to be. -Maxime Lagacé
- The noble-minded are calm and steady. Little people are forever fussing and fretting. –Confucius
- 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
- And when they played they played. And when they worked they worked. -Dr. Seuss
- Do not seek the truth, only cease to cherish your opinions. -Seng-ts’an
- One loses joy and happiness in the attempt to possess them. -Masanobu Fukuoka
- Forget the years, forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home. -Zhuangzi
- Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. -Buddha
- Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace. –Confucius
- 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
- If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. And, if you are at peace, you are living in the present. -Lao Tzu
- 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
- Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone. -Alan Watts
- Every experience is a lesson. Every loss is a gain. -Sathya Sai Baba
- Don’t seek, don’t search, don’t ask, don’t knock, don’t demand – relax. –Osho
- 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
See Also: Gradually Changing Your Life: 6 Days Challenge