If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

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

Whoever told you that practice and enlightenment are separate?

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.

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

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

The most important things in our practice are our physical posture and our way of breathing.

When you walk in the mist, you get wet.

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.

The menu is not the meal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Just to be alive is enough.

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

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

The true understanding is that the practice itself is enlightenment.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Just as parents care for their children, you should bear in mind the whole universe.

We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

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.

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.

In the spiritual world there are no time divisions such as the past, present and future; for they have contracted themselves into a single moment of the present where life quivers in its true sense.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious.

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

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

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

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