Even if you speak of 'understanding,' this understanding is not a matter of knowledge. It is what fills the entire body and mind.

The true purpose of Zen is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes.

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

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

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

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

We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

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

In Zen there must be satori; there must be a general mental upheaval which destroys the old accumulations of intellection and lays down the foundation for a new life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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 live is enough.

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

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

The world is its own magic.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

In the spiritual world there are no time divisions such as the past, present and future; for they have contracted themselves into a single moment of the present where life quivers in its true sense.

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The mind has first to be attuned to 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 true person is not anyone in particular. But like the deep blue color of the limitless sky, it is everyone, everywhere in the world.

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

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

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