“Go to the object. Leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Do not impose yourself on the object. Become one with the object. Plunge deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there.”

When I speak My lips feel cold – The autumn wind.

Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die.

Plunge Deep enough in order to see something that is hidden and glimmering.

From the pine tree, learn of the pine tree; And from the bamboo, of the bamboo.

The fact that Saigyo composed a poem that begins, “I shall be unhappy without loneliness,” shows that he made loneliness his master.

Sadly, I part from you; Like a clam torn from its shell, I go, and autumn too.

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.

Winter garden, the moon thinned to a thread, insects singing.

Between our two lives there is also the life of the cherry blossom.

When your consciousness has become ripe in true zazen-pure like clear water, like a serene mountain lake, not moved by any wind-then anything may serve as a medium for realization.

Come out to view / the truth of flowers blooming / in poverty.

Fresh spring! / The world is only Nine days old – / These fields and mountains!

Collecting all The rains of May The swift Mogami River.

Spring rain conveyed under the trees in drops.

The basis of art is change in the universe.

Make the universe your companion, always bearing in mind the true nature of things-mountains and rivers, trees and grasses, and humanity-and enjoy the falling blossoms and the scattering leaves.

Hell isn’t other people. Hell is yourself.

Some people are homeless not because they don’t have a roof over their head. but because they’re no more with the people they used to call their home.

The idea of America is a mutt-culture, isn’t it? Who the hell is America if not everybody else?

Nature, keeping only useless secrets, had placed within reach and insight of human beings the things it was necessary for them to know.

People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do, but what they don’t know is what they do does.

In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.

No book can ever be finished. While working on it we learn just enough to find it immature the moment we turn away from it

For time does nothing for you if you do nothing with it.