Zen Enlightenment Quotes

“Zen history relates of many enlightened people, but only hesitatingly does it give any information about what the experience of enlightenment is.”
― Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Enlightenment: Origins And Meaning

“Upon embarking on the way of enlightenment or beginning the practice session, the Zen disciple is strongly determined to undergo all the austerities involved.”
― Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Enlightenment: Origins And Meaning

“Most practitioners of Zen are first motivated to seek truth through their struggle with the problem of existence.”
― Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Enlightenment: Origins And Meaning

“The literal meaning of the Chinese kung-an (Japanese: kōan) is “public notice” or “public announcement.” Some words of a master or an episode from his life are presented to the disciple as an example for practice and attaining enlightenment.”
― Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Enlightenment: Origins And Meaning

“The Zen movement of the T’ang period marks a peak in the history of Zen. The Zen disciples of following generations looked to it for the highest possible realization of the Zen ideal.”
― Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Enlightenment: Origins And Meaning

“Zen masters encourage above all the overcoming of dualities. Enlightenment is an experience of oneness.”
― Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Enlightenment: Origins And Meaning

“Zen particularly regards rational inquiry and academic scholarship as a hindrance along the way of enlightenment. The life story we told earlier of Hui-neng makes the Sixth Patriarch completely illiterate. Although this part of the story is contradicted by other reports giving testimony to his intimate knowledge of the sutras, this illiteracy is taken as a criterion for the authenticity of his way of Zen.”
― Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Enlightenment: Origins And Meaning

“There has been a tendency to find Zen so radically different from other Buddhist schools, especially during the Zen boom in America, that a distinction was drawn between Zen and Buddhism in general. It goes without saying that this sort of distinction is nonsense. Zen in its entirety belongs to Chinese Mahayana Buddhism. It counts as one of the classical Buddhist schools in China, each of which can claim a certain autonomy. Zen itself professes to be that particular lineage of immediate transmission which, bound to no holy scriptures, hands down to progeny the original way to Buddha-enlightenment. It is, in brief, the meditation school of Mahayana Buddhism.”
― Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Enlightenment: Origins And Meaning

“The nonthinking taught by Zen practice entails stilling the conscious activities of the ego in order to prepare for the experience. This Zen exercise reduces the ego to silence and clears space for what is essential. What thereby occurs is anything but the cult of the ego, narcissism, or egocentrism. Rather, the ego is compelled to make room for an experience that establishes communication with the reality of all existing things.”
― Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Enlightenment: Origins And Meaning

“Insofar as the Buddha expressly repudiated bodily castigations and magical or eccentric acts, Zen can find support for its radical simplification of meditation practice in the founder of the Buddhist religion.”
― Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Enlightenment: Origins And Meaning

“According to the Zen tradition, the Buddha did not speak the supreme truth in words. The Buddha’s silence is a sign of his wisdom.”
― Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Enlightenment: Origins And Meaning

“Shākyamuni did not gain enlightenment in a gradual ascent of degrees of knowledge, but rather attained it all at once.”
― Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Enlightenment: Origins And Meaning

“In Zen an altered state of consciousness is no more than an ancillary phenomenon, never to be sought after for its own sake. When altered states and the expansion of consciousness are emphasized, as occurred in America and Europe, Zen falls into the proximity of drugs—an association not heard of in Japan.”
― Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Enlightenment: Origins And Meaning