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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Zen is a way of life, not a theory or a piece of knowledge to be stored away in our minds.

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

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.

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Whoever told you that practice and enlightenment are separate?