Wisdom of the Zen Masters Book

This collection of Zen quotations is a conundrum, because Zen is beyond words. Zen is a direct experience of the way things are. Zen is a personal journey to enlightenment, at the end of which the seeker finds he is not a person and there was no journey. Zen is knowing the mind, without using thought. Zen is living one's life by letting it live itself. Zen is choosing to have no preferences. Zen is becoming extraordinary by being nothing special. To understand Zen is to embrace paradox - to find the oneness that contains all opposites. The Zen masters are sacrilegious and outrageous. They ridicule Zen teachings and each other because enlightenment is not something that can be taught, but only directly experienced for oneself.

Zen cannot be understood by the mind, because it is about becoming aware of the mind itself. Zen wisdom is not a clever theory, it is medicine. We suffer from the illness of the illusion of separateness and Zen is the cure.