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

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.

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

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

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

Just to be alive is enough.

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

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.

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

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

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

The world is its own magic.

The true person is not anyone in particular. But like the deep blue color of the limitless sky, it is everyone, everywhere in the world.

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

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

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

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

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.

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

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

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

The true understanding is that the practice itself is enlightenment.

Whoever told you that practice and enlightenment are separate?

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

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

To live is enough.

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

The real secret of the arts: always be a beginner.

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 archer ceases to be conscious of himself as the one who is engaged in hitting the bull's-eye which confronts him. This state of unconsciousness is realized only when, completely empty and rid of the self, he becomes one with the perfecting of his technical skill.

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

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.

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

The obstacle is the path.

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

If you want to climb a mountain, begin at the top.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious.

If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

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

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.

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

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

The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in a wider sense.

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

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

Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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