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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

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

Enlightenment Sides Work
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
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
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
Eternity is the Absolute present.
D.T. SUZUKI

Inspirational Life Time
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
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
The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow.
D.T. SUZUKI

Ego Hardest Shells
That’s why I love philosophy: no one wins.
D.T. SUZUKI

Love Philosophy Winning
Zen 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. SUZUKI

Believe Men Religious
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
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. SUZUKI

Heart Religious Struggle
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
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
Unless we agree to suffer we cannot be free from suffering.
D.T. SUZUKI

Agree Suffering Unless
We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.
D.T. SUZUKI

Merely Points Teach Way
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
Enlightenment is like everyday consciousness but two inches above the ground.
D.T. SUZUKI

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

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

Past Running Time
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

Mean Moving Thinking
To point at the moon a finger is needed, but woe to those who take the finger for the moon.
D.T. SUZUKI

Moon Thinking Woe
I am an artist at living – my work of art is my life.
D.T. SUZUKI

Inspirational Life Motivational
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

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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