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

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

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

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.

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

Just to be alive is enough.

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.

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

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

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

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

The obstacle is the path.

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

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

The contradiction so puzzling to the ordinary way of thinking comes from the fact that we have to use language to communicate our inner experience, which in its very nature transcends linguistics.

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

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

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.

To live is enough.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

The practice of Zen mind is beginner's mind. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.

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

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

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

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

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

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whoever told you that practice and enlightenment are separate?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The true understanding is that the practice itself is enlightenment.

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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.

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

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

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

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

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

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.