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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

The basic idea of Zen is to come in touch with the inner workings of our being, and to do this in the most direct way possible, without resorting to anything external or superadded.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Where there is great doubt, there is great awakening; small doubt, small awakening; no doubt, no awakening.

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

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

To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

The menu is not the meal.

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

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

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.