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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

To live is enough.

The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.

When you see forms or hear sounds fully engaging body-and-mind, you intuit dharma intimately.

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

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

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?

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

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

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.

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

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

The true understanding is that the practice itself is enlightenment.

The awareness that you are here, right now, is the ultimate fact.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The menu is not the meal.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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