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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The obstacle is the path.

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

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?

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

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.

Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed, do not squander your life.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The menu is not the meal.

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

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

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

We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just to be alive is enough.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

To live is enough.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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