365 Quotes by Shunryu Suzuki

In zazen, leave your front door and your back door open. Let thoughts come and go. Just don't serve them tea.

Reality cannot be caught by thinking or feeling mind.

Although Buddhism is unattainable, we vow to attain it.If it is unattainable, how can we attain it? But we should! That is Buddhism.

When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world.When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world. The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless.We say "inner world" or "outer world" but actually,There is just one whole world.

Christopher McCandless:"I will miss you too, but you are wrong if you think that the joy of life comes principally from the joy of human relationships. God's place is all around us, it is in everything and in anything we can experience. People just need to change the way they look at things.

When we hear the sound of the pine trees on a windy day, perhaps the wind is just blowing, and the pine tree is just standing in the wind. That is all they are doing. But the people who listen to the wind in the tree will write a poem, or will feel something unusual. That is, I think, the way everything is.

Those who are attached only to the result of their effort will not have any chance to appreciate it, because the result will never come.

The true purpose [of Zen] is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes... Zen practice is to open up our small mind.

The best way to contorl people is to encourage them to be mischievous...To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him. So it is with people: first let them do what they want, and watch them... To ignore them is not good; that is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best one is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them.