Top 18 Quotes & Sayings by Dainin Katagiri

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an author Dainin Katagiri.

Last updated on December 23, 2024.

Jikai Dainin Katagiri , was a Sōtō Zen priest and teacher, and the founding abbot of Minnesota Zen Meditation Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he served from 1972 until his death from cancer in 1990. He is also the founder of Hokyoji Zen Practice Community in Eitzen, Minnesota. Before becoming first abbot of the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, Katagiri had worked at the Zenshuji Soto Zen Mission in Los Angeles and had also been of great service to Shunryu Suzuki at the San Francisco Zen Center, particularly from 1969 until Suzuki's death in 1971. Katagiri was important in helping bring Zen Buddhism from Japan to the United States during its formative years. He is also the credited author of several books compiled from his talks.

Author | January 19, 1928 - March 1, 1990

Source: Wikipedia

Be present, from moment to moment, right in the middle of the real stream of time. That gives you spiritual security. That is why in Buddhism we don't try to escape from impermanence; we face time itself in our daily living.

Dainin Katagiri

All of us experience a gap between our minds and the reality of time—that's why we suffer.

Dainin Katagiri

Accept that your life is going on beyond your usual understanding.

Dainin Katagiri

Whatever you think is delusion.

Dainin Katagiri

The point of the spiritual life is to realize Truth. But you will never understand the spiritual life, or realize Truth, if you measure it by your own yardstick.

Dainin Katagiri

You have to do your best to face every moment, because this moment will never come again. The moment that you are living right now is a very important opportunity to make your life vividly alive. If you want to live with spiritual security in the midst of constant change, you have to burn the flame of your life force in everything you do.

Dainin Katagiri

If you want to find Buddha nature, love someone and care for them.

Dainin Katagiri

The moment between before and after is called Truth.

Dainin Katagiri

Compassion is like springwater under the ground. Your life is like a pipe that can tap into that underground spring. When you tap into it, water immediately comes up. So drive your pipe into the ground. Tap into the water of compassion.

Dainin Katagiri

The important point of spiritual practice is not to try to escape your life, but to face it - exactly and completely.

Dainin Katagiri

You cannot find any peace by escaping from human pain and suffering; you have to find peace and harmony right in the midst of human pain. That is the purpose of spiritual life

Dainin Katagiri

If you see the intersection of time and space, you experience complete freedom of being. This state of existence is completely beyond any idea of time, space, or being. In that liberated state you can see fundamental truth and the phenomenal world simultaneously. That is called Buddha's world. That is the place where all sentient beings exist, so you can stand up there and see all beings, myriad beings. Then you know very clearly, through your own emotional and intellectual understanding, how all beings exist.

Dainin Katagiri

Real knowing comes up when we stand in the appropriate place. But usually we don’t. First we want to understand something according to individual knowledge, prejudice, customs and habits. This means we are standing up in our individual place, not the universal perspective. This egoistic behavior makes it very difficult to see the overall picture. But buddhas and ancestors recommend that we first stand up in the appropriate place. Just stand up, be present in the Universe itself.

Dainin Katagiri

If you want to take care of tomorrow, take better care of today. We always live now. All we have to do is entrust ourselves to the life we now live.

Dainin Katagiri

Spiritual security means you are fully alive and comfortable in your life as it is, without expecting anything.

Dainin Katagiri

The nature of ignorance is to lack deep communication with nature or with the universe. It is to separate, to isolate, to create discrimination and differences, so that finally we cannot communicate as a harmonious whole. These differences we create appear as fighting, anger, hatred, and war.

Dainin Katagiri

Make positive effort for the good.

Dainin Katagiri

Karma is not something pessimistic. If you think of karma as something wrong, you are seeing karma only according to what happened in the past. You look at the past and karma becomes a monster. So you should also look at karma in the present and future. Then karma becomes something very wide and really alive. Through karma you can understand what your destiny is. Destiny itself has no solid form; it's something you can create. You can create your life. That is why we study karma.

Dainin Katagiri

Top 18 Quotes & Sayings by Dainin Katagiri

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