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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.

D.T. Suzuki

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

Enlightenment Sides Work
Unless we agree to suffer we cannot be free from suffering.
D.T. SUZUKI

Agree Suffering Unless
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
When the identity is realized, I as swordsman see no opponent confronting me and threatening to strike me.
D.T. SUZUKI

Identity Movement Opponents
We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.
D.T. SUZUKI

Merely Points Teach Way
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
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
I raise my hand; I take a book from the other side of this desk; I hear the boys playing ball outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the neighboring woods:-in all these I am practicing Zen, I am living Zen. No worldly discussion is necessary, or any explanation.
D.T. SUZUKI

Book Boys Hands
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
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
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
The waters are in motion, but the moon retains its serenity.
D.T. SUZUKI

Heart Inspiring Moving
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
To Zen, time and eternity are one.
D.T. SUZUKI

Eternity One Time
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
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

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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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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