Zhuangzi Quotes

Words spoken about the Way have no taste. When looked at, there's not enough to see. When listened to, there's not enough to hear. When used, it is never exhausted.

There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.

The Way is ever nameless.

It is not good to talk about Zen, because Zen is nothingness... If you talk about it, you are always lying, and if you don't talk about it, no one knows it is there.

Without opening your door, you can open your heart to the world. Without looking out your window, you can see the essence of the Tao. The more you know, the less you understand. The Master arrives without leaving, sees the light without looking, achieves without doing a thing.

To become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words.

One cannot long remain so absorbed in contemplation of emptiness without being increasingly attracted to it. In vain, one bestows on it the name of infinity; this does not change its nature.

In the past some of the most influential Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians, such as Maimonides, Aquinas and Ibn Sina, made it clear that it was very difficult to speak about God, because when we confront the ultimate, we are at the end of what words or thoughts can do.

To see nothing is to perceive the Way, and to understand nothing is to know the Dharma, because seeing is neither seeing nor not seeing and because understanding is neither understanding nor not understanding.

The Great Way has no gate. Clear water has no taste. The tongue has no bone. In complete stillness, a stone girl is dancing.

I wished I could explain it to those I loved, my mother, to Japhy, but there just weren't any words to describe the nothingness and purity of it. "Is there a certain and definite teaching to be given to all living creatures?" was the question probably asked to beetle browed snowy Dipankara, and his answer was the roaring silence of the diamond.

The essence of the Way is detachment. And the goal of those who practice is freedom from appearances.

All Buddhas preach emptiness. Why? Because they wish to crush the concrete ideas of the students. If a student even clings to an idea of emptiness, he betrays all Buddhas.

By and by... there are more and more gaps of silence. Through those gaps, windows will open to the divine.

Change of state is not the point; recognizing the Changeless is the point, recognizing primordial Emptiness is the point, and if you are breathing and vaguely awake, that state of consciousness will do just fine.

In Silence God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.

Tao is the source of both fullness and emptiness. But it is itself neither fullness nor emptiness.

Ultimate Reality, if such an entity can be postulated, is ineffable.

Realize all this as illusion, realize that within the illusion is the Real.

There is a region beyond reason. Unless you get there, you will not know the sweetness of love, nor the Divine.

Brahman is beyond mind and speech, beyond concentration and meditation, beyond the knower, the known and knowledge, beyond even the conception of the real and unreal. In short, It is beyond all relativity.

My place is the Placeless, my trace is the Traceless ; 'Tis neither body nor soul, for I belong to the soul of the Beloved. I have put duality away, I have seen that the two worlds are one; One I seek, One I know, One I see, One I call.

Stillness is the only thing in this world that has no form. But then, it is not really a thing, and it is not of this world.

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.