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

The basic teaching of Buddhism is the teaching of transiency, or change.

Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious.

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

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Whoever told you that practice and enlightenment are separate?

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.

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

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

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

Just to be alive is enough.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed, do not squander your life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This very body is the Buddha. And this very earth the lotus paradise.

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

There is no need to have a deep understanding of Zen. Even though you read much Zen literature, you must read each sentence with a fresh mind.

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

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.

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

If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything.

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

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.

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

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

Even if you speak of 'understanding,' this understanding is not a matter of knowledge. It is what fills the entire body and mind.

To see nothing is to perceive the Way, and to understand nothing is to know the Dharma.

Should you desire the great tranquility, prepare to sweat white beads.

The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious.

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

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

To be in harmony with the wholeness of things is not to have anxiety over imperfection.

The state of mind that exists when you sit in the right posture is, itself, enlightenment.

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.

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

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?

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 obstacle is the path.