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Unless we agree to suffer we cannot be free from suffering.

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
Great works are done when one is not calculating and thinking.
D.T. SUZUKI

Done Great Work Thinking
Zen purposes to discipline the mind itself, to make it its own master, through an insight into its proper nature. This getting into the real nature of one’s own mind or soul is the fundamental object of Zen Buddhism.
D.T. SUZUKI

Eye Get Nature Real Retaining
I am an artist at living – my work of art is my life.
D.T. SUZUKI

Inspirational Life Motivational
We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.
D.T. SUZUKI

Merely Points Teach Way
Zen approaches it from the practical side of life-that is, to work out Enlightenment in life itself.
D.T. SUZUKI

Enlightenment Sides Work
Implicity, there should be something mysterious in every day.
D.T. SUZUKI

Mysterious Mystery Should
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
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.
D.T. SUZUKI

Buddhism Essence Historical
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
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. SUZUKI

Creating Kind Trying
The waters are in motion, but the moon retains its serenity.
D.T. SUZUKI

Heart Inspiring Moving
Eternity is the Absolute present.
D.T. SUZUKI

Inspirational Life Time
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
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
Enlightenment is like everyday consciousness but two inches above the ground.
D.T. SUZUKI

Enlightenment Everyday Two
To Zen, time and eternity are one.
D.T. SUZUKI

Eternity One Time
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
Because since the beginningless past we are running after objects, not knowing where our Self is.
D.T. SUZUKI

Past Running Time
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
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
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

Enlightenment Ignorance Silence
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
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

Art Growing Technique
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
Unless we agree to suffer we cannot be free from suffering.
D.T. SUZUKI

Agree Suffering Unless
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

Unless we agree to suffer we cannot be free from suffering.

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Unless we agree to suffer we cannot be free from suffering.

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