The obstacle is the path.

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

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

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

Even if you speak of 'understanding,' this understanding is not a matter of knowledge. It is what fills the entire body and mind.

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

Only when you can be extremely pliable and soft can you be extremely hard and strong.

When you walk in the mist, you get wet.

The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious.

The world is its own magic.

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

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

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

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

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

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

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 superior person is like water, bringing benefit to all without competing.

Just to be alive is enough.

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

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The true understanding is that the practice itself is enlightenment.

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

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.

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

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

To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things.

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

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.