We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

What we call "I" is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale.

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

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.

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.

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.

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

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

The menu is not the meal.

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

This very body is the Buddha. And this very earth the lotus paradise.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

To live is enough.

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

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

Buddhas and ordinary beings are not two. Enlightenment and delusion are not different paths.

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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?

Zen in its essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one's own being, and it points the way from bondage to freedom.

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

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

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