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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself.

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.

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

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

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

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

The world is its own magic.

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

Zazen is not step-by-step meditation. Rather it is simply the easy and pleasant practice of a Buddha, the realization of the Buddha's Wisdom.

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

Whoever told you that practice and enlightenment are separate?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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