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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

To live is enough.

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

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

Intrinsically all living beings are Buddhas, just as ice and water are of the same substance.

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

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

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.

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

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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

The menu is not the meal.

Just as parents care for their children, you should bear in mind the whole universe.

Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.

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

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

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

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

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.

When you understand one thing through and through, you understand everything. When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The color of the mountains is Buddha's body; the sound of running water is his great speech.

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

If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

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

The true understanding is that the practice itself is enlightenment.

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.

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

Whoever told you that practice and enlightenment are separate?

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

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

The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in a wider sense.

To live – is that not enough? To love – is that not everything?

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

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

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.

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