3 quotes
I have often tried to isolate that quality of "Zen" which attracted me so powerfully to its literature and later to the practice of zazen.
Nine-Headed Dragon River: Zen Journals 1969-1982 (1986)
Zen has been called the "religion before religion," which is to say that anyone can practice, including those committed to another faith.
Nine-Headed Dragon River: Zen Journals 1969-1982 (1986)
When we are mired in the relative world, never lifting our gaze to the mystery, our life is stunted, incomplete; we are filled with yearning for that paradise that is lost when, as young children, we replace it with words and ideas and abstractions — such as merit, such as past, present, and future — our direct, spontaneous experience of the thing itself, in the beauty and precision of this present moment. We identify, label, and interpret our surroundings as abstract concepts, quite separate from another concept, which is our own separate identity and ego.
Nine-Headed Dragon River: Zen Journals 1969-1982 (1986)