Top 204 Quotes & Sayings by Shunryu Suzuki - Page 4

If I tell you something, you will stick to it and limit your own capacity to find out for yourself.

There will always be war, but we must always work to oppose it.

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.

The best way to control cow and sheep is to give them a big grazing field.

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.

The way that helps will not be the same; it changes according to the situation.

The Zen way of calligraphy is to write in the most straightforward, simple way as if you were a beginner, not trying to make something skillful or beautiful, but simply writing with full attention as if you were discovering what you were writing for the first time; then your full nature will be in your writing.

It is not after we understand the truth that we attain enlightenment. To realize the truth is to live - to exist here and now.

Each of you is perfect the way you are ... and you can use a little improvement.

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.

From True Emptiness The Wondrous Being Appears

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.

Zazen practice and everyday activity are one thing. We call zazen everyday life, and everyday life zazen.

People say that practicing Zen is difficult, but there is a misunderstanding as to why. It is not difficult because it is hard to sit in the cross- legged position, or to attain enlightenment. It is difficult because it is hard to keep our mind pure and our practice pure in its fundamental sense.

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.

When something dies is the greatest teaching.

If you think you will get something from practicing zazen, already you are involved in impure practice.

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 Buddhahood

If you take pride in your attainment or become discouraged because of your idealistic effort, your practice will confine you by a thick wall.

If you want to read a letter from the Buddha's world, it is necessary to understand Buddha's world.

To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him.

To be different is to have value. In this sense all things have equal, absolute value. Each thing has absolute value and thus is equal to everything else.

Religion is not any particular teaching. Religion is everywhere.

Even if the sun were to rise from the west, the Bodhisattva has only one way.