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

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

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

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

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

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?

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

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.

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

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

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

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.

Your own treasure house contains everything you need; why search outside?

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

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

When you understand one thing through and through, you understand everything. When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

Zen is not necessarily against words, but it is well aware of their limitations.

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

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

Zen teaches nothing; it merely enables us to wake up and become aware. It does not teach, it points.

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

The mind is like a well-forged sword - it adapts to all situations.

The farther you enter into truth, the deeper it is.

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

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.

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

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

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

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

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.

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 role of Zen is neither to stand above life nor to run away from it, but to face it with a spirit of determination.

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

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

The purpose of studying Buddhism is not to study Buddhism, but to study ourselves.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

To live is enough.

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

The ocean does not reject any water; therefore it is great. The mountain does not select its stones; therefore it is great.