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

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.

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

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

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

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

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

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?

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.

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

The real secret of the arts: always be a beginner.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink.

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

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

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

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

When you walk in the mist, you get wet.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

The menu is not the meal.

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

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.

We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

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