Top 100 Shunryu Suzuki Quotes
#1. A Master who cannot bow to a disciple cannot bow to Buddha.
Shunryu Suzuki
#2. When you are just you, without thinking or trying to say something special, just saying what is on your mind and how you feel, then there is naturally self-respect.
Shunryu Suzuki
#3. If you take pride in your attainment or become discouraged because of your idealistic effort, your practice will confine you by a thick wall.
Shunryu Suzuki
#4. The best way to control cow and sheep is to give them a big grazing field.
Shunryu Suzuki
#5. When we say something, our subjective intention or situation is always involved. So there is no perfect word; some distortion is always present in a statement.
Shunryu Suzuki
#6. If you cannot bow to Buddha, you cannot be a Buddha. It is arrogance.
Shunryu Suzuki
#7. Let your ears hear without trying to hear. Let the mind think without trying to think and without trying to stop it. That is practice.
Shunryu Suzuki
#8. Strictly speaking, there are no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity.
Shunryu Suzuki
#9. Whereever you are, you are one with the clouds and one with the sun and the stars you see. You are one with everything. That is more true than I can say, and more true than you can hear.
Shunryu Suzuki
#10. Nothing outside yourself can cause any trouble. You yourself make the waves in your mind. If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm. This mind is called big mind.
Shunryu Suzuki
#11. If you try to observe the precepts, that is not true observation of precepts. When you observe the precepts without trying to observe the precepts, that is true observation of the precepts.
Shunryu Suzuki
#12. There is no need to have a deep understanding of Zen.
Shunryu Suzuki
#13. In your everyday life you always have opportunities for enlightenment. If you go to the rest room, there is a chance to attain enlightenment. When you cook, there is a chance to attain enlightenment. When you clean the floor, there is a chance to attain enlightenment.
Shunryu Suzuki
#15. When you live completely in each moment, without expecting anything, you have no idea of time.
Shunryu Suzuki
#16. We do not exist for the sake of something else. We exist for the sake of ourselves.
Shunryu Suzuki
#17. After you have practiced for a while, you will realize that it is not possible to make rapid, extraordinary progress. Even though you try very hard, the progress you make is always little by little.
Shunryu Suzuki
#18. We should not hoard knowledge; we should be free from our knowledge.
Shunryu Suzuki
#19. In zazen, leave your front door and your back door open. Let thoughts come and go. Just don't serve them tea.
Shunryu Suzuki
#20. Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink.
Shunryu Suzuki
#21. Moment after moment, everyone comes out from nothingness. This is the true joy of life.
Shunryu Suzuki
#22. Don't move. Just die over and over. Don't anticipate. Nothing can save you now because you have only this moment. Not even enlightenment will help you now because there are no other moments. With no future, be true to yourself and express yourself fully. Don't move.
Shunryu Suzuki
#23. If you want to discover the true meaning of Zen in your everyday life, you have to understand the meaning of keeping your mind on your breathing and your body in the right posture in zazen.
Shunryu Suzuki
#24. In reflecting on our problems, we should include ourselves.
Shunryu Suzuki
#25. People who know the state of emptiness will always be able to dissolve their problems by constancy.
Shunryu Suzuki
#26. In Hinayana Buddhism, practice is classified in four ways. The best way is just to do it without having any joy in it, not even spiritual joy. This way is just to do it, forgetting your physical and mental feeling, forgetting all about yourself in your practice.
Shunryu Suzuki
#27. It is a heretical view to expect something outside this world. We do not seek for something besides ourselves. We should find the truth in this world, through our difficulties, through our suffering.
Shunryu Suzuki
#28. But the way of practice is just to be concentrated on your breathing with the right posture and with great, pure effort.
Shunryu Suzuki
#29. When we have our body and mind in order, everything else will exist in the right place, in the right way.
Shunryu Suzuki
#30. The teaching which is written on paper is not the true teaching. Written teaching is a kind of food for your brain. Of course it is necessary to take some food for your brain, but it is more important to be yourself by practicing the right way of life.
Shunryu Suzuki
#31. There is no connection between I myself yesterday and I myself in this moment
Shunryu Suzuki
#33. When you do not realize that you are one with the river, or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact, we have no fear of death anymore.
Shunryu Suzuki
#34. In the mind of the beginner, there are many possibilities. In the mind of the expert there are few.
Shunryu Suzuki
#35. We must make some effort, but we must forget ourselves in the effort we make ... So it is necessary for us to encourage ourselves and to make an effort up to the last moment, when all effort disappears.
Shunryu Suzuki
#36. Our mind should be free from traces of the past, just like the flowers of spring.
Shunryu Suzuki
#37. Preparing food is not just about yourself and others. It is about everything!
Shunryu Suzuki
#38. Just continue in your calm, ordinary practice and your character will be built up.
Shunryu Suzuki
#39. So for a period of time each day, try to sit, without moving, without expecting anything, as if you were in your last moment. Moment after moment you feel your last instant. In each inhalation and each exhalation there are countless instants of time. Your intention is to live in each instant.
Shunryu Suzuki
#40. A tiger does not ignore or slight any small animal. The way he catches a mouse and catches and devours a cow are the same.
Shunryu Suzuki
#42. The purpose of our practice is just to be yourself.
Shunryu Suzuki
#43. To live in the realm of Buddha nature means to die as a small being, moment after moment.
Shunryu Suzuki
#45. To have some deep feeling about Buddhism is not the point; we just do what we should do, like eating supper and going to bed. This is Buddhism.
Shunryu Suzuki
#46. You should not be surprised at whatever you see or hear ... If you are ready to accept things as they are, you will receive them as old friends.
Shunryu Suzuki
#47. You must be true to your own way until at last you actually come to the point where you see it is necessary to forget all about yourself.
Shunryu Suzuki
#48. If you can just appreciate each thing, one by one, then you will have pure gratitude. Even though you observe just one flower, that one flower includes everything
Shunryu Suzuki
#50. When he bowed to all those buddhas, the buddhas he bowed to were beyond his own understanding. Again and again he did it.
Shunryu Suzuki
#51. There should not be any particular teaching. Teaching is in each moment.
Shunryu Suzuki
#52. When we become truly ourselves, we just become a swinging door, and we are purely independent of, and at the same time, dependent upon everything.
Shunryu Suzuki
#53. What we call "I" is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale.
Shunryu Suzuki
#54. It must be obvious ... that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.
Shunryu Suzuki
#55. You do not say, "This is enlightenment," or "That is not right practice." Even in wrong practice, when you realize it and continue, there is right practice.
Shunryu Suzuki
#57. 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.
Shunryu Suzuki
#59. If I tell you something, you will stick to it and limit your own capacity to find out for yourself.
Shunryu Suzuki
#60. Tai Shimano visited Shunryu Suzuki. "How are you feeling these days?" Suzuki replied, "They have a new name for me: Cancer!"
Shunryu Suzuki
#61. Usually when someone believes in a particular religion, his attitude becomes more and more a sharp angle pointing away from himself. In our way the point of the angle is always toward ourselves.
Shunryu Suzuki
#62. Each of you is perfect the way you are ... and you can use a little improvement.
Shunryu Suzuki
#63. 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.
Shunryu Suzuki
#64. Instead of respecting things, we want to use them for ourselves and if it is difficult to use them, we want to conquer them.
Shunryu Suzuki
#65. So it is not a matter of whether it is possible to attain Buddhahood, or if it is possible to make a tile a jewel. But just to work, just to live in this world with this understanding is the most important point, and that is our practice. That is true zazen.
Shunryu Suzuki
#66. Actually the best way to relieve your mental suffering is to sit in zazen, even in such a confused state of mind and bad posture.
Shunryu Suzuki
#67. In the Lotus Sutra, Buddha says to light up one corner - not the whole world. Just make it clear where you are.
Shunryu Suzuki
#68. We can say either that we make progress little by little, or that we do not even expect to make progress. Just to be sincere and make our full effort in each moment is enough.
Shunryu Suzuki
#69. Because all existence is founded upon the ever-present state of union, everything already exists in a state of tranquility. However, this state of tranquility is masked from us by our assumption that there is a separation, that there is a problem.
Shunryu Suzuki
#70. Wherever you go you will find your teacher, as long as you have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.
Shunryu Suzuki
#71. When you are fooled by something else, the damage will not be so big. But when you are fooled by yourself, it is fatal. No more medicine.
Shunryu Suzuki
#72. But if you make your best effort just to continue your practice with your whole mind and body, without gaining ideas, then whatever you do will be true practice.
Shunryu Suzuki
#73. If you receive things just as an echo of yourself, you do not really see them, you do not fully accept them as they are.
Shunryu Suzuki
#74. It is necessary to remember what we have done, but we should not become attached to what we have done in some special sense.
Shunryu Suzuki
#75. The goal of our life's effort is to reach the other shore, Nirvana. Prajna paramita, the true wisdom of life, is that in each step of the way, the other shore is actually reached.
Shunryu Suzuki
#76. Even if the sun were to rise from the west, the Bodhisattva has only one way.
Shunryu Suzuki
#77. When we do something with a quite simple, clear mind, we have no notion or shadows, and our activity is strong and straightforward. But when we do something with a complicated mind, in relation to other things or people, or society, our activity becomes very complex.
Shunryu Suzuki
#78. To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him.
Shunryu Suzuki
#79. Our way is not to sit to acquire something; it is to express our true nature. That is our practice.
Shunryu Suzuki
#80. When your mind is wandering about elsewhere you have no chance to express yourself. But if you limit your activity to what you can do just now, in this moment, then you can express fully your true nature, which is the universal Buddha nature.
Shunryu Suzuki
#81. 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.
Shunryu Suzuki
#82. Happiness is sorrow; sorrow is happiness. There is happiness in difficulty; difficulty in happiness. Even though the ways we feel are different, they are not really different; in essense they are the same. This is the true understanding transmitted from Buddha to us.
Shunryu Suzuki
#84. When we realize the everlasting truth of "everything changes" and find our composure in it, we find ourselves in Nirvana.
Shunryu Suzuki
#85. A Zen master once said, "To go eastward one mile is to go westward one mile." This is vital freedom. We should acquire this kind of perfect freedom.
Shunryu Suzuki
#86. Everything is perfect, but there is a lot of room for improvement.
Shunryu Suzuki
#87. True communication depends upon our being straightforward with one another ... But the best way to communicate may be just to sit without saying anything.
Shunryu Suzuki
#88. Our practice should be based on the ideal of selflessness. Selflessness is very difficult to understand. If you try to be selfless, that is already a selfish idea. Selflessness will be there when you do not try anything.
Shunryu Suzuki
#89. Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there in the imperfection is perfect reality.
Shunryu Suzuki
#90. So even though you have some difficulty in your practice, even though you have some waves while you are sitting, those waves themselves will help you.
Shunryu Suzuki
#91. We should not be just a fan of dragons; we should always be the dragon himself. Then we will not be afraid of any dragon.
Shunryu Suzuki
#92. The most important thing is to express your true nature in the simplest, most adequate way and to appreciate it in the smallest existence.
Shunryu Suzuki
#93. To stop your mind does not mean to stop the activities of mind. It means your mind pervades your whole body.
Shunryu Suzuki
#94. But do not give up your practice; continue it, knowing your weakness.
Shunryu Suzuki
#95. Someone was sitting in front of a sunflower, watching the sunflower, a cup of sun, and so I tried it too. It was wonderful; I felt the whole universe in the sunflower. That was my experience. Sunflower meditation. A wonderful confidence appeared. You can see the whole universe in a flower.
Shunryu Suzuki
#96. The person who can freely acknowledge that life is full of difficulties can be free, because they are acknowledging the nature of life - that it can't be much else.
Shunryu Suzuki
#97. Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.
Shunryu Suzuki
#98. Concentration is not to try hard to watch something ... Concentration means freedom ... In zazen practice we say your mind should be concentrated on your breathing, but the way to keep your mind on your breathing is to forget all about yourself and just to sit and feel your breathing.
Shunryu Suzuki
#99. Concentration comes not from trying hard to focus on something, but from keeping your mind open and directing it at nothing.
Shunryu Suzuki
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