“The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one's humdrum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity.”

Last update Oct. 19, 2024. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one's humdrum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonpl…" by D.T. Suzuki?

D.T. Suzuki4

Japanese author and philosopher 1870–1966

Related quotes

“What appears spectral today will be natural tomorrow. Where are such signs and works? How do we recognize the genuine ones? Like everything genuine, its inner life guarantees its truth. All works of art created by truthful minds without regard for the work's conventional exterior remain genuine for all times... The present isolation of the rare, genuine artist is absolutely unavoidable for the moment... This fact leads us to the idea that we are standing today at the turning point of two long epochs, similar to the state of the world fifteen hundred years ago, when there was also a transitional period without art and religion - a period in which great and traditional ideas died and new and unexpected ones took their place.”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

1911 - 1914, The 'Savages' of Germany' (1912)

“Life is full of little surprises.
Time travel is full of big ones.”

David Gerrold book The Man Who Folded Himself

Source: The Man Who Folded Himself (1973), p. 46

“My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

Source: The Red Headed League

“The truth is life is full of joy and full of great sorrow, but you can't have one without the other.”

Andre Dubus III book House of Sand and Fog

Source: House of Sand and Fog

“Still, no matter how commonplace, one’s death is the most interesting event of one’s life.”

Robert Sheckley book Immortality, Inc.

Source: Immortality, Inc. (1959), Chapter 1 (p. 1)

“You see, life only turns out good or bad for only a little bit. And then it turns out some other way.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

“One of the basic tenets of Zen Buddhism is that there is no way to characterize what Zen is. No matter what verbal space you try to enclose Zen in, it resists, and spills over. It might seem, then, that all efforts to explain Zen are complete wastes of time. But that is not the attitude of Zen masters and students. For instance, Zen koans are a central part of Zen study, verbal though they are. Koans are supposed to be "triggers" which, though they do not contain enough information in themselves to impart enlightenment, may possibly be sufficient to unlock the mechanisms inside one's mind that lead to enlightenment. But in general, the Zen attitude is that words and truth are incompatible, or at least that no words can capture truth.”

Douglas Hofstadter book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (1979)

““My destiny is accomplished and I die content.” How often she made such quotations as these, said or felt or was them! For just as many Americans want art to be Life, so this American novelist wanted life to be Art, not seeing that many of the values—though not, perhaps, the final ones—of life and art are irreconcilable; so that her life looked coldly into the mirror that it held up to itself, and saw that it was full of quotations, of data and analysis and epigrams, of naked and shameful truths, of facts: it saw that it was a novel by Gertrude Johnson.”

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 5: “Gertrude and Sidney”, p. 214

“Art is the beautiful illustration of Truth from the creative imagination. The truth is in our life and unless it comes from the formlessness to the form we do not realize it.”

Laxmi Prasad Devkota (1909–1959) Nepali poet

कला र जीवन (Art and Life)
Art and Life

“Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world... The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

1941 - 1967
Source: 'Statements by Four artists', Edward Hopper, in 'Reality' 1., Spring 1953, p. 8

“The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one's humdrum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

D.T. Suzuki4

Related quotes

Related topics