Not to be bound by rules, but to be creating one’s own rules-this is the kind of life which Zen is trying to have us live.
D.T. SUZUKIZen is the spirit of a man. Zen believes in his inner purity and goodness. Whatever is superadded or violently torn away, injures the wholesomeness of the spirit. Zen, therefore, is emphatically against all religious conventionalism.
More D.T. Suzuki Quotes
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Unless it grows out of yourself no knowledge is really yours, it is only borrowed plumage.
D.T. SUZUKI -
We do not realize that as soon as our thoughts cease and all attempts at forming ideas are forgotten the Buddha reveals himself before us.
D.T. SUZUKI -
When I say that Zen is life, I mean that Zen is not to be confined within conceptualization, that Zen is what makes conceptualization possible.
D.T. SUZUKI -
Unless we agree to suffer we cannot be free from suffering.
D.T. SUZUKI -
The truth of Zen is the truth of life, and life means to live, to move, to act, not merely to reflect.
D.T. SUZUKI -
Enlightenment is like everyday consciousness but two inches above the ground.
D.T. SUZUKI -
We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.
D.T. SUZUKI -
Eternity is the Absolute present.
D.T. SUZUKI -
I am an artist at living – my work of art is my life.
D.T. SUZUKI -
The right art is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede.
D.T. SUZUKI -
Zen approaches it from the practical side of life-that is, to work out Enlightenment in life itself.
D.T. SUZUKI -
Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious.
D.T. SUZUKI -
If you have attained something, this is the surest proof that you have gone astray. Therefore, not to have is to have, silence is thunder, ignorance is enlightenment.
D.T. SUZUKI -
Great works are done when one is not calculating and thinking.
D.T. SUZUKI -
To Zen, time and eternity are one.
D.T. SUZUKI