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

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.

A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken. Take heed, do not squander your life.

Coming, going, the waterbirds, don’t leave a trace, don’t follow a path.

What is the way of the Buddha? It is to study the self. What is the study of the self? It is to forget oneself. To forget oneself is to enlightened by everything in the world.

The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.

Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things.

Meditation is not a way to enlightenment, Nor is it a method of achieving anything at all. It is peace itself. It is the actualization of wisdom, The ultimate truth of the oneness of all things.

Do not travel to other dusty lands, forsaking your own sitting place; if you cannot find the truth where you are now, you will never find it.

The true person is Not anyone in particular; But like the deep blue color Of the limitless sky, It is everyone, Everywhere in the world.

Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. We will one day understand what causes it, and then cease to call it divine. And so it is with everything in the universe.

When the saint ceases to seek after holiness, purity, righteousness, truth; when he ceases to pray, stops reading the Word and gives way to carnal appetites, then it is that Satan comes.

The moment a man falls into sin, divine life ceases to flow, and his life becomes one of helplessness.

Cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue.

When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.

Noble ideas, great sentiments have always existed and have always been transmitted, but wars have never ceased.

Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the ‘environmentalist’ view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.

Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.