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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The role of Zen is neither to stand above life nor to run away from it, but to face it with a spirit of determination.

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

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

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

The menu is not the meal.

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

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

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

When you walk in the mist, you get wet.

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

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

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.

If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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.

Just to be alive is enough.

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

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

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

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.

If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?

The obstacle is the path.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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