Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

When dharma fills your body and mind, you realize that something is missing.

The menu is not the meal.

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

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few.

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

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

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

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

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

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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 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 world is its own magic.

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

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

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

To live is enough.

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

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.

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

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

What is the sound of one hand clapping?