Hakuin Ekaku Quotes

What is this true meditation? It is to make everything: coughing, swallowing, waving the arms, motion, stillness, words, action, the evil and the good, prosperity and shame, gain and loss, right and wrong, into one single koan.

If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

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

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

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

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

From the sea of effortlessness, let your great uncaused compassion shine forth.

If only you could hear the sound of snow

At this moment, is there anything lacking? Nirvana is right here now before our eyes. This place is the lotus land. This body now is the Buddha.

Meditation in action is endlessly more important than meditation in stillness.

The spirit of meditation is the combating of self-willed thinking-it is a combat against the weight of one's feelings.

Once a person is able to achieve true singlemindedness in his practice and smash apart the old nest... into which he has settled... Wisdom immediately appears... and the all-discerning Fivefold Eye opens wide.

You know the sound of two hands clapping; tell me, what is the sound of one hand?

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

I encourage all you superior seekers in the secret depths to devote yourselves to penetrating and clarifying the self, as earnestly as you would put out a fire on the top of your head.

Nirvana is right here, before our eyes.

Contemplation within activity is a million times better than contemplation within stillness.

Underlying great doubt there is great satori, where there is thorough questioning there will be thoroughgoing experience of awakening.