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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Just to be alive is enough.

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.

To live is enough.

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

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

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.

Whoever told you that practice and enlightenment are separate?

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The most important point is to accept yourself and stand on your two feet.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

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

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

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.

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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