Shunryu Suzuki
You want to eliminate your evil desires in order to reveal your Buddha nature, but where will you throw them away?Collection: Order
To cook is not just to prepare food for someone or to cook for yourself; it is to express your sincerity. So when you cook you should express yourself in your activity in the kitchen. You should allow yourself plenty of time.Collection: Cooking
To find perfect composure in the midst of change is to find nirvana.Collection: Spiritual
As long as you seek for something, you will get the shadow of reality and not reality itself.Collection: Reality
Our tendency is to be interested in something that is growing in the garden, not in the bare soil itself. But if you want to have a good harvest, the most important thing is to make the soil rich and cultivate it well.Collection: Garden
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.Collection: Mean
The point we emphasize is strong confidence in our original nature.Collection: Strong
We die, and we do not die.Collection: Dies
Those who sit perfectly physically usually take more time to obtain the true way of Zen.Collection: Meditation
Zazen practice and everyday activity are one thing. We call zazen everyday life, and everyday life zazen.Collection: Practice
If you continue this simple practice every day, you will obtain some wonderful power. Before you attain it, it is something wonderful, but after you attain it, it is nothing special.Collection: Simple
You can't make a date with enlightenment.Collection: Enlightenment
Because all existence is founded upon the ever-present state of union, everything already exists in a state of tranquility. However, this state of tranquility is masked from us by our assumption that there is a separation, that there is a problem.Collection: Oneness
It is not after we understand the truth that we attain enlightenment. To realize the truth is to live - to exist here and now.Collection: Enlightenment
If enlightenment comes first, before thinking, before practice, your thinking and your practice will not be self-centered. By enlightenment I mean believing in nothing, believing in something which has no form or no color, which is ready to take form or color. This enlightenment is the immutable truth. It is on this orginal truth that our activity, our thinking, and our practice should be based.Collection: Buddhist
If you want to study Zen, you should forget all your previous ideas and just practice zazen and see what kind of experience you have in your practice. That is naturalness.Collection: Practice
The way that helps will not be the same; it changes according to the situation.Collection: Way
When you do something, if you fix your mind on the activity with some confidence, the quality of your state of mind is the activity itself. When you are concentrated on the quality of your being, you are prepared for the activity.Collection: Mind
So it is not a matter of whether it is possible to attain Buddhahood, or if it is possible to make a tile a jewel. But just to work, just to live in this world with this understanding is the most important point, and that is our practice. That is true zazen.Collection: Jewels
The more you practice zazen, the more you will be able to accept something as your own, whatever it is.Collection: Practice
There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love...Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self-love bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.Collection: Love
If you take pride in your attainment or become discouraged because of your idealistic effort, your practice will confine you by a thick wall.Collection: Wall
If I tell you something, you will stick to it and limit your own capacity to find out for yourself.Collection: Limits
Each of you is perfect the way you are ... and you can use a little improvement.Collection: Mma
Without ignoring the objective side of the truth, it has to be subjective as well, Buddha's whole teaching just for you, something you can taste. Not something to believe in but to discover, to experience.Collection: Believe
The best way to control cow and sheep is to give them a big grazing field.Collection: Sheep
To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him.Collection: Sheep
Religion is not any particular teaching. Religion is everywhere.Collection: Teaching
If you want to read a letter from the Buddha's world, it is necessary to understand Buddha's world.Collection: World
Even if the sun were to rise from the west, the Bodhisattva has only one way.Collection: Way
In your big mind, everything has the same value...In your practice you should accept everything as it is, giving to each thing the same respect given to a Buddha. Here there is BuddhahoodCollection: Practice
When something dies is the greatest teaching.Collection: Teaching
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.Collection: School
Real Freedom is to not feel limited when wearing this Zen robe, this troublesome formal robe. Similarly, in our busy life we should wear this civilization without being bothered by it, without ignoring it, without being caught by it.Collection: Real
In order not to leave any traces, when you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely, a trace of yourself will be left in what you do. You should not have any remains after you do something. But this does not mean to forget all about it.Collection: Mean
We should not be just a fan of dragons; we should always be the dragon himself. Then we will not be afraid of any dragon.Collection: Dragons
The purpose of our practice is just to be yourself.Collection: Being Yourself
Big mind is something to express, not something to figure out. Big mind is something you have, not something to seek for.Collection: Mind
Zazen practice is the direct expression of our true nature. Strictly speaking, for a human being, there is no other practice than this practice; there is no other way of life than this way of life.Collection: Expression
If you try to observe the precepts, that is not true observation of precepts. When you observe the precepts without trying to observe the precepts, that is true observation of the precepts.Collection: Trying
When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world. When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world. The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless. We say "inner world" or "outer world" but actually, There is just one whole world.Collection: Clouds
True communication depends upon our being straightforward with one another... But the best way to communicate may be just to sit without saying anything.Collection: Communication
Someone was sitting in front of a sunflower, watching the sunflower, a cup of sun, and so I tried it too. It was wonderful; I felt the whole universe in the sunflower. That was my experience. Sunflower meditation. A wonderful confidence appeared. You can see the whole universe in a flower.Collection: Flower
Life without zazen is like winding your clock without setting it. It runs perfectly well, but it dosen't tell time.Collection: Running
The person who can freely acknowledge that life is full of difficulties can be free, because they are acknowledging the nature of life - that it can't be much else.Collection: Life Is
There are, strictly speaking, no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity.Collection: People
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.Collection: Life And Death
When you accept everything, everything is beyond dimensions. The earth is not great nor a grain of sand small. In the realm of Great Activity picking up a grain of sand is the same as taking up the whole universe. To save one sentient being is to save all sentient beings. Your efforts of this moment to save one person is the same as the eternal merit of Buddha.Collection: Effort
The secret of Soto Zen is just two words: not always so.... In Japanese, it's two words, three words in English. That is the secret of our practice.Collection: Practice