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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Whoever told you that practice and enlightenment are separate?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

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

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Zen teaches nothing; it merely enables us to wake up and become aware. It does not teach, it points.

A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The contradiction so puzzling to the ordinary way of thinking comes from the fact that we have to use language to communicate our inner experience, which in its very nature transcends linguistics.

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

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

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

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.

The true understanding is that the practice itself is enlightenment.