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.

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

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

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

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

If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

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

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

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

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

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

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

Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

When the mind is ready to understand, the truth will come to meet it.

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.

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

What Zen wants us to do is to acquire an entirely new point of view whereby to look into the mysteries of life and the secrets of nature.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The menu is not the meal.

The more you suffer the deeper grows your character, and with the deepening of your character you read the more penetratingly into the secrets of life.

If you want to climb a mountain, begin at the top.

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

The obstacle is the path.

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 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.

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

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.

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?

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.

The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious.

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

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

The true understanding is that the practice itself is enlightenment.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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 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.