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Zen has no business with ideas.

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

Forgotten Ideas Realizing
That’s why I love philosophy: no one wins.
D.T. SUZUKI

Love Philosophy Winning
Enlightenment is like everyday consciousness but two inches above the ground.
D.T. SUZUKI

Enlightenment Everyday Two
Implicity, there should be something mysterious in every day.
D.T. SUZUKI

Mysterious Mystery Should
The contradiction so puzzling to the ordinary way of thinking comes from the fact that we have to use language to communicate our inner experience, which in its very nature transcends linguistics.
D.T. SUZUKI

Experience Facts Ordinary Thinking
The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow.
D.T. SUZUKI

Ego Hardest Shells
Zen has nothing to teach us in the way of intellectual analysis; nor has it any set doctrines which are imposed on its followers for acceptance.
D.T. SUZUKI

Acceptance Doctrine Intellectual
To Zen, time and eternity are one.
D.T. SUZUKI

Eternity One Time
We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.
D.T. SUZUKI

Merely Points Teach Way
When the identity is realized, I as swordsman see no opponent confronting me and threatening to strike me.
D.T. SUZUKI

Identity Movement Opponents
Zen has no business with ideas.
D.T. SUZUKI

Business Ideas People
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

Conceptualization Confined Mean
All great artists, all great religious leaders, and all great social reformers have come out of the intensest struggles which they fought bravely, quite frequently in tears and with bleeding hearts
D.T. SUZUKI

All Bleeding Artist Great
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

Mean Moving Thinking
To point at the moon a finger is needed, but woe to those who take the finger for the moon.
D.T. SUZUKI

Moon Thinking Woe
Dhyana is retaining one’s tranquil state of mind in any circumstance, unfavorable as well as favorable, and not being disturbed or frustrated even when adverse conditions present themselves one after another.
D.T. SUZUKI

Anger Frustrated Mind
I am an artist at living – my work of art is my life.
D.T. SUZUKI

Inspirational Life Motivational
We lose track of the Original Mind and are tormented all the time by the threatening objective world, regarding it as good or bad, true or false, agreeable or disagreeable. We are thus slaves of things and circumstances.
D.T. SUZUKI

Disagreeable Regarding Threatening Track
A simple fishing boat in the midst of the rippling waters is enough to awaken in the mind of the beholder a sense of vastness of the sea and at the same time of peace and contentment – the Zen sense oof the alone.
D.T. SUZUKI

Fishing Sea Simple
Prophecy is rash, but it may be that the publication of D.T. Suzuki’s first Essays in Zen Buddhism in 1927 will seem to future generations as great an intellectual event as William of Moerbeke’s Latin translations of Aristotle in the thirteenth century or Marsiglio Ficino’s of Plato in the fifteenth.
D.T. SUZUKI

Buddhism Country Latin People Plato
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

Archery Arrows Art
Unless it grows out of yourself no knowledge is really yours, it is only borrowed plumage.
D.T. SUZUKI

Borrowed Grows Plumage
To be a good Zen Buddhist it is not enough to follow the teaching of its founder; we have to experience the Buddha’s experience.
D.T. SUZUKI

Buddhist Enough Teaching
Absolute faith is placed in a man’s own inner being. For whatever authority there is in Zen, all comes from within.
D.T. SUZUKI

Absolute Faith Inner
We have two eyes to see two sides of things, but there must be a third eye which will see everything at the same time and yet not see anything. That is to understand Zen.
D.T. SUZUKI

Eye Thirds Two Sides
The fighter is to be always single-minded with one object in view: to fight, looking neither backward nor sidewise. To go straight forward in order to crush the enemy is all that is necessary for him.
D.T. SUZUKI

Crush Fighting Warrior
As soon as you raise a thought and begin to form an idea of it, you ruin the reality itself, because you then attach yourself to form.
D.T. SUZUKI

Ideas Reality Ruins

Zen has no business with ideas.

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Zen has no business with ideas.

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