Interbeing: Zen Quotes and Sayings

“Preparing food is not just about yourself and others. It is about everything!”

– Shunryu Suzuki

“Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves”

– Nagarjuna

“Nothing ever exists entirely alone. Everything is in relation to everything else.”

– Buddha

“Heaven and earth and I are of the same root,
The ten-thousand things and I are of one substance.”

– Seng-chao

“It really 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.

“We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.”

– Thích Nhat Hanh

“Heaven & earth & I are of the same root. Ten thousand things & I are of one substance.”

– Sêng-chao

Impermanence

“One must be deeply aware of the impermanence of the world.”

– Dogen

True Self and No-Self

“The practice of Zen is forgetting the self in the act of uniting with something.”

– Koun Yamada

“I don’t let go of concepts – I meet them with understanding. Then they let go of me.”

– Byron Katie

“The Zen expression “Kill the Buddha!” means to kill any concept of the Buddha as something apart from oneself.”

– Peter Matthiessen

“When you hear that all beings are Buddha, don’t fall into the error of thinking there’s more than one Buddha.”

– Zen Graffiti

“The self divides into ten billion distinct illuminating spirits. Distinguish these without falling into names and classifications.”

– Hongzhi

“To study Buddhism is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be awakened by all things.”

– Dogen

“Melting our attachment to self is the most powerful medication for bringing mental and emotional imbalances in check.”

– Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

“Have good trust in yourself … not in the One that you think you should be, but in the One that you are.”

– Maezumi Roshi

Direct Experience

“My finger can point to the moon, but my finger is not the moon. You don’t have to become my finger, nor do you have to worship my finger. You have to forget my finger, and look at where it is pointing.”

– Osho

“To accept some idea of truth without experiencing it is like a painting of a cake on paper which you cannot eat.”

– Suzuki Roshi

“Zen has no business with ideas.”

– D.T. Suzuki

“What is important is not the right doctrine but the attainment of the true experience. It is giving up believing in belief.”

– Alan Keightley

“The menu is not the meal.”

– Alan Watts

“Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.”

– Alan Watts