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

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

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

Just to be alive is enough.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The mind is the root from which all things grow. If you can understand the mind, everything else is included.

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

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

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

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

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

Whoever told you that practice and enlightenment are separate?

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.

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

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

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

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

The way is basically perfect. It is not a matter of practice or enlightenment.

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

We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

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

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.

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 mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The obstacle is the path.

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

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

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.

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

The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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