Shunryu Suzuki Quotes - Page 4

In the zazen posture, your mind and body have, great power to accept things as they are, whether agreeable or disagreeable.

When you understand one thing through and through, you understand everything.

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

It is wisdom that is seeking for wisdom.

Time goes from present to past.

The purpose of our practice is just to be yourself.

When we do not expect anything we can be ourselves. That is our way, to live fully in each moment of time.

Although we have no actual written communications from the world of emptiness, we have some hints or suggestions about what is going on in that world, and that is, you might say, enlightenment. When you see plum blossoms or hear the sound of a small stone hitting bamboo, that is a letter from the world of emptiness.

Everything you do is right, nothing you do is wrong, yet you must still make ceaseless effort.

There is no connection between I myself yesterday and I myself in this moment

No teaching could be more direct than just to sit down.

For Zen students a weed is a treasure. With this attitude, whatever you do, life becomes an art.

In the beginner's mind there is no thought, "I have attained something." All self-centered thoughts limit our vast mind. When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners. Then we can really learn something. The beginner's mind is the mind of compassion. When our mind is compassionate, it is boundless. Dogen-zenji, the founder of our school, always emphasized how important it is to resume our boundless original mind. Then we are always true to ourselves, in sympathy with all beings, and can actually practice.

Our practice should be based on the ideal of selflessness. Selflessness is very difficult to understand. If you try to be selfless, that is already a selfish idea. Selflessness will be there when you do not try anything.

While you are continuing this practice, week after week, year after year, your experience will become deeper and deeper, and your experience will cover everything you do in your everyday life. The most important thing is to forget all gain ing ideas, all dualistic ideas. In other words, just practice zazen in a certain posture. Do not think about anything. Just remain on your cushion without expecting anything. Then eventually you will resume your own true nature. That is to say, your own true nature resumes itself.

To find perfect composure in the midst of change is to find nirvana.

If you cannot bow to Buddha, you cannot be a Buddha. It is arrogance.

A garden is never finished.

We must exist right here, right now!

So when you try hard to make your own way, you will help others...before you make your own way you cannot help anyone, and no one can help you.

The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the experts, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all possibilities.

Each one of us must make his own true way, and when we do, that way will express the universal way.

Life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact, we have no fear of death anymore, nor actual difficulty in our life.

Even though you try very hard, the progress you make is always little by little. It is not like going out in a shower in which you know when you get wet. In a fog, you do not know you are getting wet, but as you keep walking you get wet little by little. If your mind has ideas of progress, you may say, 'Oh, this pace is terrible!' But actually it is not. When you get wet in a fog it is very difficult to dry yourself.

The seed has no idea of being some particular plant, but it has its own form and is in perfect harmony with the ground, with its surroundings ... and there is no trouble. This is what we mean by naturalness.