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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The menu is not the meal.

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.

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

When you walk in the mist, you get wet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

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

Whoever told you that practice and enlightenment are separate?

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

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

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

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.

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

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

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

The true understanding is that the practice itself is enlightenment.