Hakuin Ekaku Quotes

#1. At this moment, is there anything lacking? Nirvana is right here now before our eyes. This place is the lotus land. This body now is the Buddha.

Hakuin Ekaku

#2. In singing and dancing is the voice of the Law.

Hakuin Ekaku

#3. The spirit of meditation is the combating of self-willed thinking-it is a combat against the weight of one's feelings.

Hakuin Ekaku

#4. If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

Hakuin Ekaku

#5. From the sea of effortlessness, let your great uncaused compassion shine forth.

Hakuin Ekaku

#6. If only you could hear
the sound of snow

Hakuin Ekaku

#7. From the very beginning all beings are Buddha.
Like water and ice,without water no ice,
outside us no Buddhas.

Hakuin Ekaku

#8. All beings by nature are Buddhas, as ice by nature is water. Apart from water there is no ice; apart from beings, no Buddhas.

Hakuin Ekaku

#9. What is the sound of one hand?

Hakuin Ekaku

#10. How bright and transparent the moonlight of wisdom.

Hakuin Ekaku

#11. Contemplation within activity is a million times better than contemplation within stillness.

Hakuin Ekaku

#12. I encourage all you superior seekers in the secret depths to devote yourselves to penetrating and clarifying the self, as earnestly as you would put out a fire on the top of your head.

Hakuin Ekaku

#13. At the bottom of great doubt lies great awakening. If you doubt fully, you will awaken fully.

Hakuin Ekaku

#14. Should you desire the great tranquility, prepare to sweat.

Hakuin Ekaku

#15. Once a person is able to achieve true singlemindedness in his practice and smash apart the old nest ... into which he has settled ... Wisdom immediately appears ... and the all-discerning Fivefold Eye opens wide.

Hakuin Ekaku

#16. Underlying great doubt there is great satori, where there is thorough questioning there will be thoroughgoing experience of awakening.

Hakuin Ekaku

#17. Meditation in action is endlessly more important than meditation in stillness.

Hakuin Ekaku

#18. You know the sound of two hands clapping; tell me, what is the sound of one hand?

Hakuin Ekaku

#19. Meditation in the midst of activity is a thousand times superior to meditation in stillness.

Hakuin Ekaku

#20. Nirvana is right here, before our eyes.

Hakuin Ekaku

#21. What is this true meditation? It is to make everything: coughing, swallowing, waving the arms, motion, stillness, words, action, the evil and the good, prosperity and shame, gain and loss, right and wrong, into one single koan.

Hakuin Ekaku

#22. Not knowing how near the truth is, we seek it far away.

Hakuin Ekaku