Shunryu Suzuki Quotations

When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.... 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. We can really learn something.

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

Everything is perfect and there is always room for improvement.

Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer.

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

There is no need to have a deep understanding of Zen.

If your mind is empty, it is ready for anything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.

If you think your body and mind are two, that is wrong; if you think that they are one, that is also wrong. Our body and mind are both two and one.

Preparing food is not just about yourself and others. It is about everything!

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few.

Bowing is a very serious practice. You should be prepared to bow, even in your last moment. even though it is impossible to get rid of our self-centered desires, we have to do it. Our true nature wants us to.

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.

To renounce things is not to give them up. It is to acknowledge that all things go away.

Religion is not any particular teaching. Religion is everywhere.

An enlightened person does not ignore things and does not stick to things, not even to the truth.

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.

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.

Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer.

In your everyday life you always have opportunities for enlightenment. If you go to the rest room, there is a chance to attain enlightenment. When you cook, there is a chance to attain enlightenment. When you clean the floor, there is a chance to attain enlightenment.

Let your ears hear without trying to hear. Let the mind think without trying to think and without trying to stop it. That is practice.

The more you practice zazen, the more you will be able to accept something as your own, whatever it is.

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

You must be true to your own way until at last you actually come to the point where you see it is necessary to forget all about yourself.

You want to eliminate your evil desires in order to reveal your Buddha nature, but where will you throw them away?

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

To stop your mind does not mean to stop the activities of mind. It means your mind pervades your whole body.

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 practice of Zen mind is beginner's mind. The innocence of the first inquiry—what am I?—is needed throughout Zen practice. The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities. It is the kind of mind which can see things as they are, which step by step and in a flash can realize the original nature of everything.

Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself.

Instead of respecting things, we want to use them for ourselves and if it is difficult to use them, we want to conquer them.

Those who sit perfectly physically usually take more time to obtain the true way of Zen.

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.

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.

So the secret is just to say 'Yes!' and jump off from here. Then there is no problem. It means to be yourself, always yourself, without sticking to an old self.

And we should forget, day by day, what we have done; this is true non-attachment. And we should do something new. To do something new, of course we must know our past, and this is alright. But we should not keep holding onto anything we have done; we should only reflect on it. And we must have some idea of what we should do in the future. But the future is the future, the past is the past; now we should work on something new.

We die, and we do not die.

Wabi means spare, impoverished; simple and functional. It connotes a transcendence of fad and fashion. The spirit of wabi imbues all the Zen arts, from calligraphy to karate, from the tea ceremony to Zen archery.

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

If your practice is good, you may become proud of it. What you do is good, but something more is added to it. Pride is extra. Right effort is to get rid of something extra.

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

We must exist right here, right now!

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

Only when you understand people, they may understand you. So even though you do not say anything, if you understand people there is some communication.

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.

No matter what god or doctrine you believe in, if you become attached to it, your belief will be based more or less on a self-centered idea.

Big mind is something to express, not something to figure out. Big mind is something you have, not something to seek for.

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

The highest truth is daiji, translated as dai jiki in Chinese scriptures. This is the subject of the question the emperor asked Bodhidharma: "What is the First Principle?" Bodhidharma said, "I don't know." "I don't know" is the First Principle.

The point we emphasize is strong confidence in our original nature.

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

To express yourself as you are, without any intentional, fancy way of adjusting yourself, is the most important thing.

It is a big mistake to think that the best way to express yourself is to do whatever you want, acting as you please. This is not expressing yourself. If you know what to do exactly, and you do it, then you can express yourself fully.

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

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

From True Emptiness The Wondrous Being Appears

Time goes from present to past.

When he bowed to all those buddhas, the buddhas he bowed to were beyond his own understanding. Again and again he did it.

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

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

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

You may say that things happen just by chance, but I don't feel that way.

In the Lotus Sutra, Buddha says to light up one corner - not the whole world. Just make it clear where you are.

To have some deep feeling about Buddhism is not the point; we just do what we should do, like eating supper and going to bed. This is Buddhism.

Life without zazen is like winding your clock without setting it. It runs perfectly well, but it dosen't tell time.

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.

I think you're all enlightened, until you open your mouths.

People who know the state of emptiness will always be able to dissolve their problems by constancy.

Enlightenment is not a complete remedy.

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.

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.

The secret of zen is just two words: not... always... so.

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

It is wisdom that is seeking for wisdom.

In reflecting on our problems, we should include ourselves.

When you are just you, without thinking or trying to say something special, just saying what is on your mind and how you feel, then there is naturally self-respect.

In the mind of the beginner, there are many possibilities. In the mind of the expert there are few.

The true practice to meditation is to sit as if you where drinking water when you are thursty.

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

The purpose of our practice is just to be yourself.

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

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.

After you have practiced for a while, you will realize that it is not possible to make rapid, extraordinary progress. Even though you try very hard, the progress you make is always little by little.

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

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.

We do not exist for the sake of something else. We exist for the sake of ourselves.

True communication depends upon our being straightforward with one another... But the best way to communicate may be just to sit without saying anything.

All descriptions of reality are limited expressions of the world of emptiness. Yet we attach to the descriptions and think they are reality. That is a mistake.

You should not have any remains after you do something. But this does not mean to forget all about it. 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.

We ourselves cannot put any magic spells on this world. The world is its own magic.

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

The world is its own magic.

When something dies is the greatest teaching.

Strictly speaking, there are no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity.

There should not be any particular teaching. Teaching is in each moment.

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.

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.

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.

Tai Shimano visited Shunryu Suzuki. "How are you feeling these days?" Suzuki replied, "They have a new name for me: Cancer!"