In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few.

In the spring, hundreds of flowers; in autumn, a harvest moon; in the summer, a refreshing breeze; in winter, snow will accompany you. If useless things do not hang in your mind, any season is a good season for you.

Instead of having a deep understanding of the teaching, we need a strong confidence in our teaching, which says that originally we have Buddha nature.

Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there in the imperfection is perfect reality.

The Buddha and all sentient beings are nothing but expressions of the one mind. There is nothing else.

Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.

Your own treasure house contains everything you need; why search outside?

The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious.

The practice of Zen is forgetting the self in the act of uniting with something.

When dharma fills your body and mind, you realize that something is missing.

When you realize how perfect everything is, you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.

Wherever you are, you are one with the clouds and one with the sun and the stars you see. You are one with everything. That is more true than I can say, and more true than you can hear.

This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

The more you suffer the deeper grows your character, and with the deepening of your character you read the more penetratingly into the secrets of life.

The instant you speak about a thing, you miss the mark.

The treasure house within you contains everything, and you are free to use it. You don't need to seek outside.

The dharma wheel turns from the beginning. There is neither excess nor deficiency. The whole universe is moistened with nectar, and the truth is ready to harvest.

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.

We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

Where is the place that your original face has not yet emerged?

The practice of Zen mind is beginner's mind. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.

Not knowing how near the truth is, we seek it far away.

Zen proposes its solution by directly appealing to facts of personal experience and not to book-knowledge.

Just as parents care for their children, you should bear in mind the whole universe.

When the mind is ready to understand, the truth will come to meet it.

All beings by nature are Buddha, as ice by nature is water. Apart from water there is no ice; apart from beings, no Buddha.

When you walk in the mist, you get wet.

Moment after moment, completely devote yourself to listening to your inner voice.

When walking, just walk. When sitting, just sit. Above all, don't wobble.

The contradiction so puzzling to the ordinary way of thinking comes from the fact that we have to use language to communicate our inner experience, which in its very nature transcends linguistics.

If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

What we call "I" is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale.

The awareness that you are here, right now, is the ultimate fact.

The most important things in our practice are our physical posture and our way of breathing.

Time passes unhindered. When we make ourselves better, we make the world better.

Where there is great doubt, there is great awakening; small doubt, small awakening; no doubt, no awakening.

The superior person is like water, bringing benefit to all without competing.

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.

The basic idea of Zen is to come in touch with the inner workings of our being, and to do this in the most direct way possible, without resorting to anything external or superadded.

The zazen I speak of is not meditation practice. It is simply the dharma gate of joyful ease.

Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?

Everybody has the light of Buddha within, but they don't look for it.

The farther you enter into truth, the deeper it is.

Zen teaches nothing; it merely enables us to wake up and become aware. It does not teach, it points.

Intrinsically all living beings are Buddhas, just as ice and water are of the same substance.

In Zen there must be satori; there must be a general mental upheaval which destroys the old accumulations of intellection and lays down the foundation for a new life.

When you see forms or hear sounds fully engaging body-and-mind, you intuit dharma intimately.

The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities.

The silence between the notes is as important as the notes themselves.

Life is an art, and like perfect art it should be self-forgetting.

At the bottom of great doubt lies great awakening. If you doubt fully, you will awaken fully.

Birth and death are neither two things nor one thing. Life is not an appearance, death is not a disappearance.

In the spiritual world there are no time divisions such as the past, present and future; for they have contracted themselves into a single moment of the present where life quivers in its true sense.

When you are you, Zen is Zen. Big mind is just big mind.

Only when you can be extremely pliable and soft can you be extremely hard and strong.

To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening.

Each of you is perfect the way you are... and you can use a little improvement.

Just to be alive is enough.

Without darkness, there is no light. Without the path, there is no arrival.