Dogen Quotes

#1. 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.

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

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#3. When you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point.

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#4. Understand clearly that when a great need appears a great use appears also; when there is small need there is small use; it is obvious, then, that full use is made of all things at all times according to the necessity thereof.

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#5. When one first seeks the truth, one separates oneself from it.

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#6. Learn the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate your self. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest.

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#7. The color of the mountains is Buddha's body; the sound of running water is his great speech.

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#8. Why abandon a seat in your own home to wander in vain through dusty regions of another land? If you make one false step, you miss what is right before your eyes.

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#9. Each moment is all being, each moment is the entire world. Reflect now whether any being or any world is left out of the present moment.

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#10. If you do not get it from yourself, where will you go for it?

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#11. 184. "Focus your mind on one thing, absorb the old examples, study the actions of the masters- penetrate deeply into a single form of practice." ~

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#12. A zen master's life is one continuous mistake.

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

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#14. To escape from the world means that one's mind is not concerned with the opinions of the world.

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#15. Nothing can be gained by extensive study and wide reading. Give them up immediately.

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#16. You should study not only that you become a mother when your child is born, but also that you become a child.

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#17. 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.

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#18. The coming and going of birth and death is a painting. Unsurpassed enlightenment is a painting. The entire phenomenal universe and the empty sky are nothing but a painting.

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#19. There are myriads of forms and hundreds of grasses throughout the entire earth, yet each grass and each form itself is the entire earth.

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#20. 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.

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#21. I haven't got any Buddhism. I live by letting things happen.

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#22. Those who practice know whether realization is attained or not, just as those who drink water know whether it is hot or cold

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#23. Just practice good, do good for others, without thinking of making yourself known so that you may gain reward. Really bring benefit to others, gaining nothing for yourself. This is the primary requisite for breaking free of attachments to the Self.

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#24. Forgetting oneself is opening oneself

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#25. That the self advances and confirms the ten thousand things is called delusion; that the ten thousand things advance and confirm the self is called enlightenment.

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#26. If we seek the Buddha outside the mind, the Buddha changes into a devil.

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#27. 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.

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#28. Through one word, or seven words, or three times five, even if you investigate thoroughly myriad forms, nothing can be depended upon. Night advances, the moon glows and falls into the ocean. The black dragon jewel you have been searching for, is everywhere.

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#29. You should stop searching for phrases and chasing after words. Take the backward step and turn the light inward. Your body-mind of itself will drop off and your original face will appear. If you want to attain just this, immediately practice just this.

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#30. Coming, going, the waterbirds don't leave a trace, don't follow a path.

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#31. There are mountains hidden in mountains. There are mountains hidden in hiddenness. This is complete understanding.

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#32. Those who seek the easy way do not seek the true way.

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#33. If he cannot stop the mind that seeks after fame and profit, he will spend his life without finding peace.

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#34. Clearly I know, the mind is mountains, rivers, and the great earth; sun, moon, and stars.

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#35. It's too late to be ready.

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#36. Do not doubt that mountains walk simply because they may not appear to walk like humans.

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#37. Refraining from all evil, not clinging to birth and death, working in deep compassion for all sentient beings, respecting those over you and pitying those below you, without any detesting or desiring, worrying or lamentation - this is what is called Buddha. Do not search beyond it.

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#38. If you want to do a certain thing, you first have to be a certain person. Once you become that certain person, you will not care anymore about doing that certain thing.

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#39. Let your heart go out and abide in things. Let things return and abide in your heart.

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

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#41. Sitting is the gateway of truth to total liberation.

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#42. Those who see worldly life as an obstacle to Dharma see no Dharma in everyday actions. They have not yet discovered that there are no everyday actions outside of Dharma.

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#43. Practice and enlightenment are not two.

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#44. Just study Buddhism. Don't follow the sentiments of the world.

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#45. Handle even a single leaf of green in such a way that it manifests the body of the Buddha. This in turn allows the Buddha to manifest through the leaf.

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#46. Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment. (From 'Fukan zazengi')

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#47. A fool sees himself as another, but a wise man sees others as himself.

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#48. Because monks come from the midst of purity, they consider as good and pure what does not arouse desire among other people.

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#49. All that's visible springs from causes intimate to you. While walking, sitting, lying down, the body itself is complete truth. If someone asks the inner meaning of this: Inside the treasury of dharma eye a single grain of dust.

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#50. If you cannot find the truth within yourself, where else do you expect to find it?

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#51. There is no beginning to practice nor end to enlightenment; There is no beginning to enlightenment nor end to practice.

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#52. Does a dragon still sing from within a withered tree?

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#53. Students, when you want to say something, think about it three times before you say it. Speak only if your words will benefit yourselves and others. Do not speak if it brings no benefit.

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#54. 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.

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#55. People like what is not true and they don't like what is true.

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#56. That you carry yourself forward and experience the myriad things is delusion. That the myriad things come forward and experience themselves is awakening

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#57. Because mountains are high and broad, the way of riding the clouds is always reached in the mountains; the inconceivable power of soaring in the wind comes freely from the mountains

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

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

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#60. Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

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#61. To what shall
I liken the world?
Moonlight, reflected
In dewdrops,
Shaken from a crane's bill.

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#62. To enter the Buddha Way is to stop discriminating between good and evil and to cast aside the mind that says this is good and that is bad.

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#63. When the old plum tree blooms, the entire world blooms.

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#64. Do not miss the opportunity of offering even a single drop into the ocean of merit or a grain atop the mountain of the roots of beneficial activity.

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#65. When you paint Spring, do not paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots, but just paint Spring. To paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots is to paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots - it is not yet painting Spring.

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#66. If we look at the world with a deluded body and mind, we will think that our self is permanent. But if we practice correctly and return to our true self, we will realize that nothing is permanent

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#67. Although we say mountains belong to the country, actually, they belong to those that love them.

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#68. 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.

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

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#70. Realization doesn't destroy the individual any more than the reflection of the moon breaks a drop of water. A drop of water can reflect the whole sky.

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#71. In a snowfall that covers the winter grass a white heron uses his own whiteness to disappear.

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#72. 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.

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#73. Students today should live fully every moment of time. This dew-like life fades away; time speeds swiftly. In this short life of ours, avoid involvement in superfluous things and just study the Way.

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#74. If you want to see things just as they are, then you yourself must practice just as you are.

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#75. What you think in your own mind to be good, or what people of the world think is good, is not necessarily good.

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#76. Zazen is the ultimate practice. This is indeed the True Self. The Buddhadharma is not to be sought outside of this.

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#77. Every man possesses the Buddha-nature. Do not demean yourselves.

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#78. In a mind clear as still water, even the waves, breaking, are reflecting its light.

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#79. When other sects speak well of Zen, the first thing that they praise is its poverty.

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#80. When we discover that the truth is already in us, we are all at once our original selves.

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#81. Do not practice buddha-dharma with the thought that it is to benefit others.

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#82. IF YOU WOULD BE FREE OF GREED, FIRST YOU HAVE TO LEAVE EGOTISM BEHIND.
THE BEST MENTAL EXERCISE FOR RELINQUISHING EGOTISM IS CONTEMPLATING IMPERMANENCE.

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#83. No matter how bad a state of mind you may get into, if you keep strong and hold out, eventually the floating clouds must vanish and the withering wind must cease.

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#84. If you study a lot because you are worried that others will think badly of you for being ignorant and you'll feel stupid, this is a serious mistake.

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#85. 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.

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

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#87. Do not view mountains from the scale of human thought

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#88. An ancient buddha said, "Mountains are mountains; waters are waters." These words do not mean mountains are mountains; they mean mountains are mountains.

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#89. Working with plants, trees, fences and walls, if they practice sincerely they will attain enlightenment.

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#90. Time is three eyes and eight elbows.

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#91. Inside the treasury of the dharma eye a single grain of dust.

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#92. If you want to travel the Way of Buddhas and Zen masters, then expect nothing, seek nothing, and grasp nothing.

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#93. What is reality? An icicle forming in fire.

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#94. Only those who have the great capacity of genuine trust can enter this realm [the realm of the buddhas]. Those who have no trust are unable to accept it, however much they hear it.

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#95. If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?

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#96. To be in harmony with the wholeness of things is not to have anxiety over imperfections.

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#97. Mountains and oceans have whole worlds of innumerable wondrous features. We should understand that it is not only our distant surroundings that are like this, but even what is right here, even a single drop of water.

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#98. Something you want badly enough can always be gained. No matter how fierce the enemy, how remote the beautiful lady, or how carefully guarded the treasure, there is always a means to the goal for the earnest seeker. The unseen help of the guardian gods of heaven and earth assure fulfillment.

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#99. Know that the true dharma emerges of itself [during the practice of zazen], clearing away hindrances and distractions.

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#100. We must always be disturbed by the truth.

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