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

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?

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

As long as you seek for something, you will get the shadow of reality and not reality itself.

A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.

The true path is not difficult; just avoid picking and choosing.

Meditation in the midst of activity is a thousand times superior to meditation in stillness.

In a mind clear as still water, even the waves, breaking, are reflecting its light.

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

Personal experience is everything in Zen. No ideas are intelligible to those who have no backing of experience.

What Zen wants us to do is to acquire an entirely new point of view whereby to look into the mysteries of life and the secrets of nature.

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

Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself.

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 most important point is to accept yourself and stand on your two feet.

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

The true understanding is that the practice itself is enlightenment.

Buddhas and ordinary beings are not two. Enlightenment and delusion are not different paths.

To live – is that not enough? To love – is that not everything?

Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly and freely between the rocks.

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

The truth of Zen is the truth of life, and life means to live, to move, to act, not merely to reflect.

Whoever told you that practice and enlightenment are separate?

The menu is not the meal.

The mind is the root from which all things grow. If you can understand the mind, everything else is included.

When you understand one thing through and through, you understand everything. When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything.

Leave your front door and your back door open. Allow your thoughts to come and go. Just don't serve them tea.

To live is enough.

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

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there.

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

The ocean does not reject any water; therefore it is great. The mountain does not select its stones; therefore it is great.

Do not think you will necessarily be aware of your own enlightenment.

The purpose of studying Buddhism is not to study Buddhism, but to study ourselves.

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

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

The mind is like a well-forged sword - it adapts to all situations.

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

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

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

Zazen is not step-by-step meditation. Rather it is simply the easy and pleasant practice of a Buddha, the realization of the Buddha's Wisdom.

Zen is a way of life, not a theory or a piece of knowledge to be stored away in our minds.

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.

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

Zen in its essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one's own being, and it points the way from bondage to freedom.

When you practice zazen you should not try to attain anything. You should just sit in the complete calmness of your mind and not rely on anything.

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?

To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things.

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

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

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

The eye with which I see Buddha is the same eye with which Buddha sees me.

Our practice cannot be perfect, but without being discouraged by this, we should continue it. This is the secret of practice.

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.

When you walk in the mist, you get wet.

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

The time of the past becomes the present, the time of the present becomes the future, the time of the future becomes the present, and the time of the present becomes the past.

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.

Zen is not necessarily against words, but it is well aware of their limitations.