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

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.

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

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

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

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

When you are you, Zen is Zen. Big mind is just big mind.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whoever told you that practice and enlightenment are separate?

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

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

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

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

Just to be alive is enough.

The mind is the root from which all things grow. If you can understand the mind, everything else is included.

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

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.

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

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.

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

When you walk in the mist, you get wet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

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

The world is its own magic.

The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

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.

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

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

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