Although its light is wide and great, the Moon is reflected in a puddle one inch wide. The whole Moon and the entire sky is reflected in one dew drop on the grass.
DOGENMeditation is not a way to enlightenment, Nor is it a method of achieving anything at all. It is peace itself. It is the actualization of wisdom, The ultimate truth of the oneness of all things.
More Dogen Quotes
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If you want to do a certain thing, you first have to be a certain person. Once you become that certain person, you will not care anymore about doing that certain thing.
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Students today should live fully every moment of time. This dew-like life fades away; time speeds swiftly. In this short life of ours, avoid involvement in superfluous things and just study the Way.
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Yet you must not cling to the words of the old sages either; they, too, may not be right. Even if you believe them, you should be alert so that, in the event that something superior comes along, you may follow that.
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Why abandon a seat in your own home to wander in vain through dusty regions of another land? If you make one false step, you miss what is right before your eyes.
DOGEN -
If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
DOGEN -
Do not miss the opportunity of offering even a single drop into the ocean of merit or a grain atop the mountain of the roots of beneficial activity.
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Something you want badly enough can always be gained. No matter how fierce the enemy, how remote the beautiful lady, or how carefully guarded the treasure, there is always a means to the goal for the earnest seeker. The unseen help of the guardian gods of heaven and earth assure fulfillment.
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The recognition of the coming and going of things is a first step in training and practice.
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I haven’t got any Buddhism. I live by letting things happen.
DOGEN -
A zen master’s life is one continuous mistake.
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To start from the self and try to understand all things is delusion. To let the self be awakened by all things is enlightenment.
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Look for Buddha outside your own mind, and Buddha becomes the devil.
DOGEN -
In the mundane, nothing is sacred. In sacredness, nothing is mundane.
DOGEN -
To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.
DOGEN -
Since it is the practice of enlightenment, that practice has no beginning and since it is enlightenment within the practice, that realization has no end.
DOGEN -
Coming, going, the waterbirds, don’t leave a trace, don’t follow a path.
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What is reality? An icicle forming in fire.
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Cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words, and following after speech.
DOGEN -
When you paint Spring, do not paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots – just paint Spring.
DOGEN -
What is the way of the Buddha? It is to study the self. What is the study of the self? It is to forget oneself. To forget oneself is to enlightened by everything in the world.
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Prefer to be defeated in the presence of the wise than to excel among fools.
DOGEN -
If you do not get it from yourself, where will you go for it?
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One must be deeply aware of the impermanence of the world.
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Do not travel to other dusty lands, forsaking your own sitting place; if you cannot find the truth where you are now, you will never find it.
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Time is three eyes and eight elbows.
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I asked, “What are words?” The tenzo said, “One, two, three, four, five.” I asked again, “What is practice?” “Nothing in the entire universe is hidden.”
DOGEN