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

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.

Wherever you are, you are one with the clouds and one with the sun and the stars you see. You are one with everything. That is more true than I can say, and more true than you can hear.

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

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

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

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

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

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 menu is not the meal.

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

We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When you walk in the mist, you get wet.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Whoever told you that practice and enlightenment are separate?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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