“Since it is the practice of enlightenment, that practice has no beginning and since it is enlightenment within the practice, that realization has no end.”

To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.

Truth is not far away. It is nearer than near. There is no need to attain it, since not one of your steps leads away from it.

Just as parents care for their children, you should bear in mind the whole universe.

People who truly follow the Way would do well to conceal the fact that they are Buddhists.

What is reality? An icicle forming in fire.

Cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words, and following after speech.

Do not think you will necessarily be aware of your own enlightenment.

People like what is not true and they don’t like what is true.

I asked, “What are words?” The tenzo said, “One, two, three, four, five.” I asked again, “What is practice?” “Nothing in the entire universe is hidden.”

Forgetting oneself is opening oneself

Zazen is an activity that is an extension of the universe. Zazen is not the life of an individual, it’s the universe that’s breathing.

When both body and mind are at peace, all things appear as they are: perfect, complete, lacking nothing.

In doing zazen it is desirable to have a quiet room. You should be temperate in eating and drinking, forsaking all delusive relationships. Setting everything aside, think of neither good nor evil, right nor wrong. Thus having stopped the various functions of your mind, five up even the idea of becoming a Buddha.

The recognition of the coming and going of things is a first step in training and practice.

Emptiness is bound to bloom, like hundreds of grasses blossoming.

But do not ask me where I am going, As I travel in this limitless world, Where every step I take is my home.

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.

To become what we are capable of becoming is the only end in life.

The pursuit of peace and progress cannot end in a few years in either victory or defeat.

“Toward what end, toward what end?”- but do not ask it too often lest you pass up the fun of programming for the constipation of bittersweet philosophy.

The Communist bloc of old was a study in the failure of failure. Losers in the Soviet economy were the people at the end of the long lines for consumer goods. Worse losers were the people who had spent hours getting to the head of the line, only to be told that the goods were unavailable.

It was a real education, going right from the consumer end to the record factory.

The end of the First World War had thrown Germany’s youth into great turmoil. The reins of power had fallen from the hands of a deeply disillusioned older generation, and the younger ones drew together in larger and smaller groups to blaze new paths or, at least, to discover a new star to steer by.

Clean fighting solves everything. It ends all bad blood and any ill feelings people have. That’s my thoughts.