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. SUZUKIThe 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.
More D.T. Suzuki Quotes
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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.
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When the identity is realized, I as swordsman see no opponent confronting me and threatening to strike me.
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Zen has no business with ideas.
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Absolute faith is placed in a man’s own inner being. For whatever authority there is in Zen, all comes from within.
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Because since the beginningless past we are running after objects, not knowing where our Self is.
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Enlightenment is like everyday consciousness but two inches above the ground.
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The claim of the Zen followers that they are transmitting the essence of Buddhism is based on their belief that Zen takes hold of the enlivening spirit of the Buddha, stripped of all its historical and doctrinal garments.
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That’s why I love philosophy: no one wins.
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Zen approaches it from the practical side of life-that is, to work out Enlightenment in life itself.
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Unless it grows out of yourself no knowledge is really yours, it is only borrowed plumage.
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Great works are done when one is not calculating and thinking.
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I am an artist at living – my work of art is my life.
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We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.
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Eternity is the Absolute present.
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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