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

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

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 live is enough.

We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

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

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

At the bottom of great doubt lies great awakening. If you doubt fully, you will awaken fully.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

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

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

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

Whoever told you that practice and enlightenment are separate?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All beings by nature are Buddha, as ice by nature is water. Apart from water there is no ice; apart from beings, no Buddha.

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

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.

The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities.

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

Buddhas and ordinary beings are not two. Enlightenment and delusion are not different paths.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

The way is basically perfect. It is not a matter of practice or enlightenment.

When you walk in the mist, you get wet.

The menu is not the meal.

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

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

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

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

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.

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