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

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

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

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

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

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.

The obstacle is the path.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Just to be alive is enough.

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

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

We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 menu is not the meal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

To live is enough.

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

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.

A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.

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

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

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

This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

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