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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

The obstacle is the path.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

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

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.

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

This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

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

The farther you enter into truth, the deeper it is.

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 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 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.

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

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

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?

Just to be alive is enough.

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

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?

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

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