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. SUZUKIThe 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. SUZUKIImplicity, there should be something mysterious in every day.
D.T. SUZUKIZen is the spirit of a man. Zen believes in his inner purity and goodness. Whatever is superadded or violently torn away, injures the wholesomeness of the spirit. Zen, therefore, is emphatically against all religious conventionalism.
D.T. SUZUKIZen 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. SUZUKITo point at the moon a finger is needed, but woe to those who take the finger for the moon.
D.T. SUZUKIWhen the identity is realized, I as swordsman see no opponent confronting me and threatening to strike me.
D.T. SUZUKIUnless it grows out of yourself no knowledge is really yours, it is only borrowed plumage.
D.T. SUZUKIDhyana 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. SUZUKII am an artist at living – my work of art is my life.
D.T. SUZUKIThat’s why I love philosophy: no one wins.
D.T. SUZUKIWe 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. SUZUKIThe waters are in motion, but the moon retains its serenity.
D.T. SUZUKIThe 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. SUZUKIThe 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. SUZUKIAll 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. SUZUKIZen has no business with ideas.
D.T. SUZUKI