The waters are in motion, but the moon retains its serenity.
D.T. SUZUKITo be a good Zen Buddhist it is not enough to follow the teaching of its founder; we have to experience the Buddha’s experience.
More D.T. Suzuki Quotes
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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 -
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 -
To point at the moon a finger is needed, but woe to those who take the finger for the moon.
D.T. SUZUKI -
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 -
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 -
Eternity is the Absolute present.
D.T. SUZUKI -
Great works are done when one is not calculating and thinking.
D.T. SUZUKI -
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 -
I am an artist at living – my work of art is my life.
D.T. SUZUKI -
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 -
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 -
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 -
When the identity is realized, I as swordsman see no opponent confronting me and threatening to strike me.
D.T. SUZUKI -
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 -
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






