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

We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

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

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

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

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

Just to be alive is enough.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

If you want to climb a mountain, begin at the top.

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

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.

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

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

If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

When you walk in the mist, you get wet.

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

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

The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious.

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

Time passes unhindered. When we make ourselves better, we make the world better.

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

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

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.

Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure.

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

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