D.T. Suzuki Quotes - Page 2

Zen has no business with ideas.

The rocks are where they are- and this is their will. The rivers flow- and this is their will. The birds fly- this is their will. Human beings talk- this is their will. The seasons change, heaven sends down rain or snow, the earth occasionally shakes, the waves roll, the stars shine- each of them follows its own will. To be is to will and so is to become.

The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious.

One has not understood until one has forgotten it.

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. Therefore, anything that has the semblance of an external authority is rejected by Zen. Absolute faith is placed in a man's own inner being. For whatever authority there is in Zen, all comes from within.

Life, according to Zen, ought to be lived as a bird flies through the air, or as a fish swims in the water.

Zen in it's essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one's being, and it points the way from bondage to freedom.

To point at the moon a finger is needed, but woe to those who take the finger for the moon.

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.

Unless we die to ourselves, we can never be alive again.

As soon as you raise a thought and begin to form an idea of it, you ruin the reality itself, because you then attach yourself to form.

Zen opens a man's eyes to the greatest mystery as it is daily and hourly performed; it enlarges the heart to embrace eternity of time and infinity of space in its every palpitation; it makes us live in the world as if walking in the garden of Eden

Zen abhors repetition or imitation of any kind, for it kills. For the same reason Zen never explains, but only affirms. Life is fact and no explanation is necessary or pertinent. To explain is to apologize, and why should we apologize for living? To live—is that not enough? Let us then live, let us affirm! Herein lies Zen in all its purity and in all its nudity as well.

That's why I love philosophy: no one wins.

The intuitive recognition of the instant, thus reality is the highest act of wisdom.

Because since the beginningless past we are running after objects, not knowing where our Self is, we lose track of the Original Mind and are tormented all the time by the threatening objective world, regarding it as good or bad, true or false, agreeable or disagreeable. We are thus slaves of things and circumstances.

The worst passion we mortals cherish is the desire to possess. Even when we know that our final destination is a hole not more than three feet square, we have the strongest craving

Fundamentally the marksman aims at himself.

The meaning of service is to do the work assigned ungrudgingly and without thought of personal reward material or moral.

Among the most remarkable features characterizing Zen we find these: spirituality, directness of expression, disregard of form or conventionalism, and frequently an almost wanton delight in going astray from respectability.

Not to be bound by rules, but to be creating one's own rules-this is the kind of life which Zen is trying to have us live.

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

When the identity is realized, I as swordsman see no opponent confronting me and threatening to strike me. I seem to transform myself into the opponent, and every movement he makes as well as every thought he conceives are felt as if they were my own and I intuitively...know when and how to strike him.

Art always has something of the unconscious about it.

If I am asked If I am asked, then, what Zen teaches, I would answer, Zen teaches nothing. Whatever teachings there are in Zen, they come out of one's own mind. We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.