I’ve archived the Maku mozo!’s for those who jumped in mid-stream.

Or for if you just want to see them all in one place.

More zen-type quotes on the Words Page.

Join Maku mozo!

It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the

unessential.

-Bruce Lee

How not to be lost in our problems is our practice.

-Shunryu Suzuki

Our way is to se what we are doing, moment after moment.

-Shunryu Suzuki

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

-Shunryu Suzuki

The most important thing is to confront yourself and to be yourself. Then naturally you can see and accept things as they are. You will have perfect wisdom at that time.

-Shunryu Suzuki

If we don’t compound our problems we’ll be able to deal with them.

-Shunryu Suzuki

I don’t know, is the first principle of our practice.

-Shunryu Suzuki

Wherever you go you will find your teacher, as long as you have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.

-Shunryu Suzuki

Not to be subject to affliction is what’s meant by liberation [enlightenment]. There is no other liberation.

-Bodhidharma

A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging

their prejudices.

-William James

Memory is the lack of comprehension; that lack of comprehension is your background, and from that proceeds your action.

-Krishnamurti

Understanding comes through being aware of what is.

-Krishnamurti

Now is it possible to come that state when you yourself perceive the truth instantaneously and, therefore, put and end to confusion? I say that it is, and that it is the only possible way.

-Krishnamurti

To be free from the wrong approach is the only problem. This means, really, the understanding of conditioning, which is the mind.

-Krishnamurti

The problem is the mind itself, not the problems it breeds.

-Krishnamurti

Is there really any time at all apart from chronological time? Obviously there is time as yesterday, but is there time as the mind thinks of it?

-Krishnamurti

Surely time, psychological time, is the product of the mind.

-Krishnamurti

To understand anything, any human or scientific problem, what is important, what is essential?

-Krishnamurti

To understand anything, any human or scientific problem, what is important, what is essential? A quiet mind, is it not? A mind that is intent on understanding.

-Krishnamurti

When you are listening to music, your mind does not wander all over the place; you are listening. Similarly, when you want to understand conflict, you are no longer depending on time at all; you are simply confronted with what is, which is conflict.

-Krishnamurti

We never do anything well until we cease to think about the manner of doing it.

– Hazlitt

Four rules for life: Show up. Pay attention. Tell the truth. Don’t be attached to the results.

-Arrien

When the Sixth Patriarch, Hui-neng, was asked whey he was chosen to succeed the Fifth Patriarch, he answered: "Because I do not understand Buddhism."

Zen history

It is only when we realize that life is taking us nowhere that it begins to have meaning.

-Ouspensky

Only in the present do things happen.

-Borges

The difficulty is that we do not see, we do not listen, we do not perceive things directly and simply as they are.

-Krishnamurti

The Great Way is not difficult

for those who are not attached to their preferences.

-Sengtsan

What is that which is silent? Look into it by examining awareness.

-Krishnamurti

In each moment, fearlessly follow your heart.

-Unknown

No yesterday, no tomorrow, and no today.

-Seng-T’san

The more you talk and think about it,

the further astray you wander from the truth.

Stop talking and thinking,

and there is nothing you will not be able to know.

-Seng-T’san

The foolish reject what they see, not what they think; the wise reject what they think, not what they see.

-Huang-po

What is reality? An icicle forming in fire.

-Dogen

Just as a man who steps upon a serpent shutters in fear but then looks down and notices it is only a rope, so it was that one day I realized that what I was calling "I" cannot be found, and all fear and anxiety vanished with my mistake.

-Buddha

Life is denied by the lack of attention, whether it be cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.

-Boulanger

What is that which is silent? Look into it by examining awareness.

-Krishnamurti

Since earnestly studying the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness,

I’ve learned to still all the common states of mind.

-Po Chu-i

Freedom is a state of mind.

-Krishnamurti

When water is so clear it sparkles

you can see the bottom without effort

when your mind doesn’t have a goal

no circumstance can distract you

-Han-shan

once your mind contains no plan

wherever you are it’s alert

-Han-shan

… the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

-Einstein

Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.

-Unknown

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the

children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the

long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or

nothing.

-Helen Keller

Act without doing; work without effort.

-Lao Tzu

Don’t think: Look!

-Wittgenstein

Those who seek the truth by means of intellect and learning only get further and further away from it.

-Huang Po

As a lamp, a cataract, a star in space

an illusion, a dewdrop, a bubble

a dream, a cloud, a flash of lightning

view all created thing like this.

-Buddha

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.

-Leo Tolstoy

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

-Tolstoy

The activity of the mind is life.

-Aristotle

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.

-James Thruber

Renunciation is not giving up the things of this world, but accepting that they go away.

-Shunryu Suzuki

People who argue about which comes first and which comes second only confuse themselves.

-Hui-neng

Do not be bothered by anything.

-Shunryu Suzuki

Nothing that exists is true

don’t think what you see is true

what you see is surely false

if you want to find the true

the mind free of the false is true

-Hui-neng

To see what truly doesn’t move

in movement find what doesn’t move

-Hui-neng

If you can perceive its attributes

the ultimate truth doesn’t move

if you can realize this

you will see how reality works

-Hue-neng

Make of yourself a light. Rely upon yourself; do not depend on anyone else.

-Buddha

Hate is like feeding yourself poison and expecting someone else to die.

-Unknown (Native American Indian)

The point of the teachings is to control your own mind.

-Buddha

Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.

-Sawyer

To adhere to a thing because of its form is the source of delusion.

-Buddha

People cherish the distinctions of purity and impurity; but in the nature of things, there is no such distinction, except as it arises from false and absurd images in their mind.

-Buddha

People naturally fear misfortune and long for good fortune, but if the distinction is carefully studied, misfortune often turns out to be good fortune and good fortune to be misfortune.

The wise man learns to meet the changing circumstances of life with an equitable spirit, being neither elated by success nor depressed by failure. Thus one realizes the truth of non-duality.

-Buddha

If you can doubt at points where other people find no impulse to doubt, you are making progress.

-Chuang Tzu

Leaf fallen,

flying back to the branch,

butterfly.

-Basho

The mind that is not disturbed by things as they occur, that remains pure and tranquil under all circumstances, is the true mind and should be the master.

-Buddha

There are two kinds of worldly passions that defile and cover over the pure, true nature.

The first is the passion for analysis and discussion by which people become confused in judgement. The second is the passion for emotional experience by which people’s values become confused.

-Buddha

The eternal life is given to those who live in the present.

-Wittgenstein

It is easy to shield the outer body from poisoned arrows, but it is impossible to shield the mind from the poisoned darts that originate within itself: greed, anger, foolishness, and the infatuations of egoism.

-Buddha

It is natural for people to think and act selfishly and egotistically and, because of it, it is equally natural for suffering and unhappiness to follow.

-Buddha

To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one’s own in the midst of abundance.

-Buddha

Do not become attached to the things you like, do not maintain aversion to the things you dislike. Sorrow, fear, and bondage come from one’s likes and dislikes.

-Buddha

It is worthy to perform the present duty well and without fail; do not seek to avoid or postpone it till tomorrow. But acting now, one can live a good day.

-Buddha

Do not rely on others. Do not rely on anything other than yourselves.

-Barragato (quoting the Buddha)

One of the great teachings of Hui-neng is to trust the word in one’s own heart. To know that is all one needs.

-Barragato

It is the very mind itself

That leads the mind astray.

-Takuan Soho

Students of the way need study no doctrines whatever, but learn only how to avoid seeking for and attaching yourselves to anything.

-Huang Po

Observe things as they are and don’t pay attention to other people.

-Huang Po

You aren’t swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are.

-Jesus

Make it a moment-to-moment goal to maintain stability by not creating disorder.

-Unknown

You should know how to put all mental activity to rest and thus achieve tranquility. Certainly, do not begin by thinking things out and ending up in perplexity.

-Huang Po

The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing, it refuses nothing. It receives, but does not keep.

-Unknown

By ignorance the truth is known.

-Suso

This teaching is called The Great Way. The very nature of the Great Way is voidness of opposition.

-Huang Po

Question: At this very moment, all sorts of erroneous thoughts are constantly flowing through our minds. How can you speak of having none?

Answer: Error has no substance; it is entirely the product of your own thinking…. Therefore it is said, "When thoughts arise, then do all things arise. When thoughts vanish, then do all things vanish."

-Huang Po

A perception, sudden as blinking, that subject and object are one, will lead to a deeply mysterious wordless understanding; and by this understanding will you awake to the truth of Zen.

-Huang Po

Have no longing to become a future Buddha; your sole concern should be, as thought succeeds thought, to avoid clinging to any of them.

-Huang Po

The Way is not something which can be studied. Study leads to the retention of concepts and so the Way is entirely misunderstood.

-Huang Po

Question: What is implied by "seeing into the Real Nature"?

Answer: That Nature and your perception of it are one. … Let me repeat that the perceived cannot perceive.

-Huang Po

Hating can never overcome hatred. Only love can bring the end of hating. This is the eternal law.

You too will die someday, as everyone must. When you know this, your hatred is stilled.

-Dhammapada

The awareness that the observer is the observed is not a process of identification with the observed.

-Krishnamurti

The body does not say ‘I am.’ It is you who says ‘I am the body.’ Find out who this ‘I’ is. Seeking its source, it will vanish.

-Maharshi

The moment we want to be something we are no longer free.

-Krishnamurti

Nothing is more real than nothing.

-Beckett

Whoever knows that nothing depends on anything has found the way.

-Bodhidharma

If you want to realize, don’t seek from others, don’t search outside

yourself.

-Keizan

If you want to realize, don’t seek from others, don’t search outside

yourself. You should look into the state before you were embodied – there

will be no difference or distinctions.

-Keizan

It is only because you cling to outward forms that you come to "see,"

"hear," "feel," and "know" things as individual entities. True perception is

beyond your powers so long as you indulge in this.

-Huang Po

Everyone knows enough to pursue what he does not know,

but no one knows enough to pursue what he already knows.

-Chuang Tzu

Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be.

-Huxley

Time means nothing at all

It’s the mark of the living

and the dying.

-John Mccauley

My advice is to give up all indulgence in conceptual thought and intellectual processes.

Huang Po

DO NOT PERMIT THE EVENTS OF YOUR DAILY LIVES TO BIND YOU, BUT NEVER WITHDRAW YOURSELVES FROM THEM.

Huang Po

Never allow yourselves to mistake outward appearance for reality.

-Huang Po

Avoid the error of thinking in terms of past, present, and future. The past has not gone, the present is but a fleeting moment; the future is not yet to come.

-Huang Po

… do not permit the least movement of your mind to disturb you. This alone is what is called liberation.

-Huang Po

Nothing holds us back but our thought.

-Hagen

In the search for truth, there are certain questions that are not important. Of what material is the universe constructed? Is the universe eternal? Are there limits or not to the universe? What is the ideal form of organization for human society? If a man were to postpone his search for Enlightenment until such questions were solved, he would die before he found the path.

-Buddha

The farther one travels, the less one knows.

-Lao Tsu

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

-Krishnamurti

When thoughts arise, then do all things arise. When thoughts vanish, then do all things vanish.

-Huang Po

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.

-Buddha

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.

-Buddha

What is not permanent is not worth striving for.

-Maharshi

It is impossible for any one to get what he has not got already.

-Maharshi

Peace is the absence of disturbance. The disturbance is due to the arising of thoughts in the individual, which is only the ego arising up from pure consciousness.

-Maharshi

See what the present is.

-Maharshi

So the thing to do when working on a morotcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one’s self from one’s surroundings. When that is done successfully, then everything else follows naturally.

-Pirsig

I found my sparrow Sonrin dead one morning

and dug his grave as gently as I would my own daughter’s.

-Ikkyu

I try to be a good man but all that comes

of trying is I feel more guilty.

-Ikkyu

Clouds very high – look

Not one word helped them get up there.

-Ikkyu

I now know that I’m not "depressed." All my problems are because I can’t control my negative thoughts.

(overheard)

The only thing we can really count on is getting surprised.

-Waitzkin

We are always acting on what has just finished happening. … We think we’re in the present, but we aren’t. The present we know is only a movie of the past.

-Wolfe

To study the way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.

-Dogen

Think about it. Since you are someone, you speak of before birth and after death; but what further past, present, or future could you think of?

-Keizan

Always, without a moment’s error, from birth to death it is just thus – but unless you encounter it once, you will vainly be confused by material senses, you will not know your own self.

-Keizan

The Zen school does not set up words, but only transmits direct pointing … It is just carried out by having people directly subdue their conceptual faculty and be silent.

-Keizan

The Zen school does not set up words, but only transmits direct pointing … It is just carried out by having people directly subdue their conceptual faculty and be silent.

This is not a matter of aversion to words or considering silence good; it is to let you know your mind is thus. Like clear water, like space, it is pure, clear, and sparkling clean, harmoniously fluid and unobstructed.

-Keizan

Do you not know that we do not come from anywhere even as we are born, and we do not go anywhere even as we die? Born wherever you are, you pass away on the spot; origination and annihilation as time goes by never rest.

-Keizan

Do not obstruct yourself by hearing and seeing.

-Keizan

What do you call other, what do you call self? … You should not see even an inch of the whole earth as being outside your own mind.

-Keizan

It is not necessary to ask others – just look back on your very first determination of mind; look into yourself and see what is right and what is not right.

-Keizan

Since beginningless time and forever into the future, though we are temporarily creating divisions and arranging time frames of past, present and future, yet from eon to eon it is all just so.

-Keizan

Facts are the enemy of truth.

-Cervantes

Seriousness is an accident of time. It consists in putting too high a value on time. In eternity there is no time. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.

-Hesse

There is something that can be found in one place. It is a great treasure which may be called the fulfillment of existence. The place where this treasure can be found is the place where one stands.

-Buber

Since beginningless time and forever into the future, though we are temporarily creating divisions and arranging time frames of past, present and future, yet from eon to eon it is all just so. … Knowing this realm can only be obtained by making a penetrating investigation and stopping your own folly and realizing the truth by yourself.

-Keizan

Indeed, not craving anything is called the way, so even if it’s contentment you want, this is still based on greed.

-Keizan

Although according to the view of emotional attachments the physical body is received from one’s parents, still, we should realize that our being is not the gross physical elements.

-Keizan

Zen study is basically to reach the fundamental and clarify the essence of mind. … As for what this fundamental essence is, your features may differ as you die and are born over and over again, but at all times there is an inherent awareness.

-Keizan

Without relying on seeing and hearing, not being involved in knowing objects, try to see what is underneath. There will be an alert, awake knowledge that is not gotten from others; you will unexpectedly have a spontaneous realization.

-Keizan

Our teaching is not just spoken or unspoken teaching; there is something that appears obviously and is clearly never hidden. Everything, down to the chirping of insects, is revealed.

-Keizan

Indeed, since people lack nothing, it is a pity that they wander so much in illusion once they have been deluded by their perception.

-Keizan

Without arousing any intellectualization, just see directly – there is definitely something that has no skin or flesh; its body is like space, with no particular form or color. … Empty and clear, it is just a matter of being completely aware of it.

-Keizan

What has complete freedom to do with the circumstances of speech?

-Keizan

When you hear words, you should understand the heart of the matter – don’t get stuck on the words. Saying "fire" is not fire, saying "water" is not water. That is why your mouth doesn’t burn when you speak of fire and doesn’t get wet when you speak of water. So we know that water and fire are in reality not words.

-Keizan

… Arouse your will for the moment, even for an instant, so that it is a like a great fire in which nothing can remain, like open space to which nothing can be affixed.

-Keizan

Is there anything at all, even in the slightest?

-Keizan

Awareness is therapy per se.

-Perls

When it’s time to get dressed, put on your clothes. When you must walk, then walk. When you must sit, then sit. … When you’re tired, lie down. The fool will laugh at you but the wise man will understand.

-Lin Chi

If you want to perceive and understand objectively, just don’t allow yourself to be confused by people. Detach from whatever you find inside or outside yourself and only then will you attain liberation.

-Lin Chi

Zen is not a particular state but the normal state: silent, peaceful, unagitated. In Zazen [meditation] neither intention, analysis, specific effort nor imagination take place. It’s enough just to be without hypocrisy, dogmatism, arrogance — embracing all opposites.

-Taisen Deshimaru

In all our various activities each day, is there anything we lack?

-Lin Chi

The mind that does not understand is the Buddha [your true nature].

There is no other.

-Ma-Tsu

Seize from every moment its unique novelty and do not prepare your joys.

-Gide

Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.

-Gide

Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.

-Gide

Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.

-Gide

The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.

-Gide

Welcome anything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.

-Gide

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.

-Hanh

Zen consists in faith in your innate quality of intelligence in your organic pattern. Trust it. After all, your eyes are beautifully blue or brown, your hair is wonderfully brunette or blond. Your breathing is fantastic. Your heart is working beautifully. That is your Zen. Go ahead.

-Bankei

Let your mind wander in simplicity, blend your spirit with the vastness, follow along with things the way they are, and make no room for personal views – then the world will be governed.

-Chuang Tzu

As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.

-Proverbs 23.17

What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out.

-Wordsworth

Once you can accept the universe as being something expanding into an infinite nothing which is something, wearing stripes with plaid is easy.

-Einstein

Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.

-Twain

He who has mastered the true nature of life does not labor over what life cannot do.

He who has mastered the true nature of fate does not labor over what knowledge cannot change.

-Chuang Tzu

Withdraw into thoughtlessness and in this way give life to your mind;

Be reverent of what is within and extend this same reverence to others.

-Chuang Tzu

Intelligence comes into being when the brain discovers its fallibility, when it discovers what it is capable of, and what it is not.

-Krishnamurti

Don’t depend on anybody to find out what is true and what is false.

-Krishnamurti

The crisis is not in the outer world, but in consciousness itself.

-Krishnamurti

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

-Da Vinci

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

-Da Vinci

I think this is the real key: To love what you do.

-Krishnamurti

What has been done – pass it by and do not regret it. Events that have not yet arrived – let them go and do not think about them. This is the person who is walking on the path.

-Bodhidharma

We need to re-educate ourselves by being aware, seeing how we are caught in words.

-Krishnamurti

What is important is to understand the operation of your own mind.

-Krishnamurti

When you are able to leave the realm of relative things and return to the real Oneness, you will find that names do not exist in the true reality.

-Hui Neng

When you reach the goal, the whole universe will become right. but if you do not comprehend the truth, you will forever be at odds with things.

-Hui Hai

If anything is not forgotten, you’ve spent your life in vain.

-Ch’ing-tu

Do not be bothered by anything.

-S. Suzuki

The Great Way is not difficult for those who are not attached to their preferences.

-Sengstan

Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject that we do not see the true nature of things.

-Sengstan

Stop talking and thinking, and there is nothing you will not be able to know.

-Sengstan

Do not search for the truth; only cease to cherish opinions.

-Sengstan

If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion.

-Sengstan

Just let things be in their own way, and there will be neither coming nor going.

-Sengstan

Above all, keep it simple.

-Escoffier

All living beings form habits of action influenced by subjective feelings and affections based on ignorance of the essence of awareness.

-Chinul

Just as insects can alight anywhere but on the flames of a fire, the minds of emotional people can form relations to anything except transcendent insight.

-Pai-chang

You simply must pay attention! Take care.

-Yun-men

Whatever you think is delusion.

-Katagiri

Which is important, to see what I am, or to speculate about what I will be?

-Krishnamurti

Surely, the important thing is to see what I am, because then I can deal with it.

-Krishnamurti

… the comparative mind is the most stupid mind of all … when you compare, you are no longer investigating to find out what is true …

-Krishnamurti

People know good and bad but not how good and bad begin and end; is that

complete knowledge?

-Ming-chiao

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who matter won’t mind and those who mind don’t matter.

-Suess

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

-Thich Nhat Hanh

There are trivial truths and the great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.

-Niels Bohr

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss

people.

-Eleanor Roosevelt

All my life, my heart has sought a thing I cannot name.

"Remembered line from a long-forgotten poem."

-Hunter S. Thompson

Move your bowels, piss, get dressed, eat your rice, and if you get tired, then lie down. Folls may laugh at me, but the wise will understand.

-Lin-chi

What counts is this present moment – there’s nothing that requires a lot of tiime. Everything I am saying to you is for the moment only, medicine to cure the disease. Ultimately, it has no true reality.

-Lin-chi

If you are a person who honestly wants to learn the Way, don’t go looking for the world’s mistakes, but set about as fast as you can looking for a true and proper understanding.

-Lin-chi

The way I see it, one shouldn’t be averse to anything.

-Lin-chi

Do not be bothered by anything.

-Shunryu Suzuki

When I see a man who has learned to master the environment, I know that here is the secret meaning of the buddhas.

-Lin-chi

Learn to put a stop to thoughs and never look for something outside yourselves.

-Lin-chi

If the mind differentiates, its nature and manifestations become separated from one another. But so long as it does not differentiate, its nature and manifestations do not become separated.

-Lin-chi

… You insist on mistaking idle names for reality. This is a great error. Even if something did exist, it would in all cases be no more than an environment that changes with what it depends on.

-Lin-chi

Is there anything at all, even in the slightest?

-Keizan

Whoever knows that nothing depends on anything has found the Way.

-Bodhidharma

As long as you seek something it can only lead to suffering. Better to do nothing.

-Lin-chi

Whether the student practices swordsmanship, archery, caligraphy, or tea ceremony, any conscious understanding of the practice that remains in the mind will only cause conflict during a performance.

-Munenori

Eighty years and eight,

no craving, no attachment.

Let’s go back home,

when the water clears, the moon

appears.

-Tai-ch’ien

Truth and reality in art do not arise until you no longer understand what you are doing.

-Matisse

Very little is needed to make a happy life. It is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

-Aurelius

The secret is within yourself.

-Hui-neng

To be a warrior is to learn to be genuine in every moment of your life.

-Chogyam Trungpa

It’s almost impossible to overestimate the unimportance of most things.

-Logue

The only way you can endure your pain is to let it be painful.

-Shunryu Suzuki

We should know our tendencies.

-Shunryu Suzuki

Whe you are fooled by something else, the damage will not be so big. But when you are fooled by yourself, it is fatal.

-Shunryu Suzuki

When you look at life carefully, you will find out how important it is to become a trustworthy person.

-Shunryu Suzuki

Question: "In just a few words, what is Buddhism all about?"

Accept what is as it is and help it to be its best.

-Shunryu Suzuki

In reflecting on our problems, we should include ourselves.

-Shunryu Suzuki

Do not say too late.

-Shunryu Suzuki

The point is where you don’t expect it to be.

-Shunryu Suzuki

When there is feedom from self, you have absolute freedom.

-Shunryu Suzuki

When you practice as though this were your last moment, you will have

freedom from everything.

-Shunryu Suzuki

The most important thing is to be able to enjoy your life without being

folled by things.

-Shunryu Suzuki

So the secret is to say ‘Yes!’ and jump off from here. Then there is no

problem. It means to be yourself in the present moment, always yourself

without sticking to an old self. You forget all about your old self and are

refreshed.

-Shunryu Suzuki

Life is like stepping onto a boat that is about to sail out to sea and sink.

-Shunryu Suzuki

First thought, best thought.

-Shunryu Suzuki

Like the birds I came,

No road under my feet.

A golden-chained gate unlocks itself.

-Shunryu Suzuki

As long as you seek for something, you will get

the shadow of reality and not reality itself.

-Shunryu Suzuki

When you say "Wait a moment," you are bound by your own karma; when you say "Yes I will," you are free.

-Shunryu Suzuki

Things go the way the mind goes.

-Shunryu Suzuki

Don’t think about things that you don’t want to happen.

-Unknown

The way to study Zen is to be always aware of yourself, to be careful, to be sincere with yourself. …always remain conscious of what you are doing, of what is going on.

-Shunryu Suzuki