Zen Quotes

“to be able to enter into the stillness that is one’s own true nature, one must break up constantly the addiction and fascination with being something.”
― Albert Low, Zen: Talks, Stories and Commentaries

“Sometimes it feels as though one is surely committing spiritual suicide. It feels that all that is best in one’s life is being eroded and lost. But still go on. This is faith.”
― Albert Low, Zen: Talks, Stories and Commentaries

“awareness is itself a solvent. Simply allowing a thought, idea, anxiety or compulsion to rest within the field of awareness will dissolve that thought, idea and so on.”
― Albert Low, Zen: Talks, Stories and Commentaries

“With this turnabout the lusting after reflection, the search to grasp the absolute in transitory experience, loses its grip. One no longer experiences things as objective and independent, but as reflections within knowing. Upstream of all necessity to focus attention, all conflict becomes a dance, all opposition melts as I and the ‘other’ are known as two faces of one reality.”
― Albert Low, Zen: Talks, Stories and Commentaries

“We poke the fires of negativity with memories: past failures, past conflicts, past betrayals and humiliations. Constantly we rake the coals seeking to know the self in the light and heat of their pain. The last thing people will abandon, said Gurdjieff, is their suffering.”
― Albert Low, Zen: Talks, Stories and Commentaries

“As a rule we do not know the self, instead we know things, thoughts, emotions, feelings but not the self. Gurdjieff said we do not remember ourselves and he was saying much the same thing as Dogen. But is not the trouble that we are too full of the self? Yes, but we forget what is essential. Dogen says to know the self is to forget the self, but, before we can forget the self, we must know the self. We constantly use the word ‘I.’ All of our conversations, real and imaginary, revolve around ‘I.’ We say, ‘I’ like and ‘I’ don’t like; ‘I’ want and ‘I’ don’t want. We confuse ‘I’ with the self but although they cannot be separated, they are not the same. A Zen nun said, “I cannot pull out the weed because if I do so I’ll pull out the flower.”
― Albert Low, Zen: Talks, Stories and Commentaries

“The only way to know yourself is to be, which means to forget all that you think you are. In the Bible, God says, “Be still and know that I am God.” This is what I mean by simply ‘be.’ This statement could easily, without loss, be reduced to, “Be still and know,” or just “Be still,” or, as we have just said, “Be.” Being is knowing, knowing is stillness, and this still knowing, which is being without limit, some people call God.”
― Albert Low, Zen: Talks, Stories and Commentaries

“The doubt sensation, also called the yearning sensation, the longing sensation, allows the mind to become more and more aroused without its resting on anything, to the point where pure awareness without content, reflection or desire can spring forth in a burst of light, an explosion of pure being.”
― Albert Low, Zen: Talks, Stories and Commentaries

“This moment of non-reflection unveils the awakening before the awakening, the moment when bodhichitta arises. An awakening up-stream of reflection, upstream of all conflict in a moment of knowing without content, it is without any awareness of knowing. One cannot even speak of ‘a moment of knowing.’ Knowing shines.”
― Albert Low, Zen: Talks, Stories and Commentaries

“It is no longer real, but just an illusion that I make real for my own amusement. To know the self we must make the mountains move. All we need is just an insight; not much, just a flash, a moment in which no reflection occurs. These moments go on all the time, and all the time we close up against them. We close up against a loss of self, we react, we clench, we adopt one or other strategy.”
― Albert Low, Zen: Talks, Stories and Commentaries

“To know the self requires we take a first step and see the drama, regardless of content, as a drama, and know it to be a reflection. Few are able to take this first, necessary step because we are so convinced the drama is real, that the props and cast, the scenes and dialogue are real, having a life independent of what we put in. Nowadays this conviction of the reality of the drama has even got to the point where we are all victims: women are victims, workers are victims, patients are victims, citizens are victims. We complain, protest, litigate, all in the solid conviction that it is ‘they’ who are the cause, that ‘it’ is the problem.”
― Albert Low, Zen: Talks, Stories and Commentaries

“When we are uncertain, undecided, embarrassed, or have stage fright, we lose the sensation of self. We sometimes say after an embarrassing moment, “I was completely at sea, I was lost, I was out of my mind.” and so on. If the uncertainty is great then feelings of anxiety, fear, or panic can flood in. So we develop strategies to cope with the anxiety by restoring the sensation of self. Men stroke their chins using the stubble as a kind of sandpaper. Women touch their hair.”
― Albert Low, Zen: Talks, Stories and Commentaries

“On the other hand, although perhaps more rarely, happiness comes without any ego satisfaction. Monks, hermits, anchorites sometimes find this kind of happiness, but so do men and women who are simply content with what they have regardless of whether it is much or little. Ego satisfaction is a clear reflection of self, or as clear as the muddy water of experience will allow.”
― Albert Low, Zen: Talks, Stories and Commentaries

“I’ too is a reflection, a reflection with which we are quite fascinated, evoking as it does a constant and unending drama of emotions, fears and failures, successes and joys. We ride the surf of life on the board of ‘I,’ struggling to stay on the crest but forever plunging into waves of distress. ‘I’ is always something that is going to happen in the future, something to look forward to, to achieve, to get, to win. From this comes the ride’s momentum. The satisfaction of ‘I’ is our cult, to this we bend our will and desire.”
― Albert Low, Zen: Talks, Stories and Commentaries