The more you suffer the deeper grows your character, and with the deepening of your character you read the more penetratingly into the secrets of life.
D.T. SUZUKIZen 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.
More D.T. Suzuki Quotes
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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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The truth of Zen is the truth of life, and life means to live, to move, to act, not merely to reflect.
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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.
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Implicity, there should be something mysterious in every day.
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Eternity is the Absolute present.
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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.
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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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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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That’s why I love philosophy: no one wins.
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To point at the moon a finger is needed, but woe to those who take the finger for the moon.
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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.
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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
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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.
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Zen has no business with ideas.
D.T. SUZUKI