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

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

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.

We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

When you walk in the mist, you get wet.

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

The real secret of the arts: always be a beginner.

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

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

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

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.

When you listen to someone, you should give up all your preconceived ideas and your subjective opinions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed, do not squander your life.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our practice cannot be perfect, but without being discouraged by this, we should continue it. This is the secret of practice.

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.

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

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

To live is enough.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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 color of the mountains is Buddha's body; the sound of running water is his great speech.