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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Whoever told you that practice and enlightenment are separate?

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

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

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

The obstacle is the path.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

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

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

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

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

To live is enough.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

The menu is not the meal.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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