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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Even if you speak of 'understanding,' this understanding is not a matter of knowledge. It is what fills the entire body and mind.

Whoever told you that practice and enlightenment are separate?

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

When you walk in the mist, you get wet.

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

To live is enough.

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

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

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

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

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

The true person is not anyone in particular. But like the deep blue color of the limitless sky, it is everyone, everywhere in the world.

The true understanding is that the practice itself is enlightenment.

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 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.

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

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

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.

The obstacle is the path.

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

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

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

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?