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

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.

The world is its own magic.

We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

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

The role of Zen is neither to stand above life nor to run away from it, but to face it with a spirit of determination.

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

Whoever told you that practice and enlightenment are separate?

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

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

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

Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink.

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

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

The true purpose of Zen is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes.

To what shall I compare this life? It is like a boat that left at dawn, leaving no trace.

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

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

Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure.

When you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point.

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

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

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

To live is enough.

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

The idea of Zen is to catch life as it flows. There is nothing extraordinary or mysterious about Zen. I raise my hand; I take a book from the other side of the desk; I hear the boys playing ball outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the neighboring wood: all these I do in Zen.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The mind of the past is ungraspable; the mind of the future is ungraspable; the mind of the present is ungraspable.

When both body and mind are at peace, all things appear as they are: perfect, complete, lacking nothing.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious.

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

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

When you listen to someone, you should give up all your preconceived ideas and your subjective opinions.

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

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

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

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.

To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things.

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

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

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.