32 Quotes by Taisen Deshimaru

You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair.

Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance.

You cannot separate any part from the whole: interdependence rules the cosmic order.

The body moves naturally, automatically, without any personal intervention or awareness. If we think too much, our actions become slow and hesitant.

You have to practice until you die.

To practice Zen or the Martial Arts, you must live intensely, wholeheartedly, without reserve - as if you might die in the next instant

If you have a glass full of liquid you can discourse forever on its qualities, discuss whether it is cold, warm, whether it is really and truly composed of H-2-O, or even mineral water, or sake. Meditation is Drinking it!

Human beings are afraid of dying. They are always running after something: money, honor, and pleasure. But if you had to die now, what would you want?

Nobody today is normal, everybody is a little bit crazy or unbalanced, people's minds are running all the time. Their perceptions of the world are partial, incomplete. They are eaten alive by their egos. They think they see, but they are mistaken; all they do is project their madness, their world, upon the world. There is no clarity, no wisdom in that!