Taisen Deshimaru Quotes

#1. If we achieve satori and the satori shows, like a bit of dogshit stuck to the top of our nose, that is not so good.

Taisen Deshimaru

#2. Train the body and develop stamina and endurance. But the spirit of competition and power that presides over them is not good, it reflects a distorted vision of life. The root of the martial arts is not there.

Taisen Deshimaru

#3. 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?

Taisen Deshimaru

#4. We should learn to think with our fingers.

Taisen Deshimaru

#5. Zen is not a particular state but the normal state: silent, peaceful, unagitated. In Zazen neither intention, analysis, specific effort nor imagination take place. It's enough just to be without hypocrisy, dogmatism, arrogance - embracing all opposites.

Taisen Deshimaru

#6. We feel our shell keeps us safe, but it crushes us and others, and keeps out light and sun.

Taisen Deshimaru

#7. Keep your hands open, and all the sands of the desert can pass through them. Close them, and all you can feel is a bit of grit.

Taisen Deshimaru

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

Taisen Deshimaru

#9. What is called zazen is sitting on a zafu [pillow] in a quiet room, absolutely still, in the exact and proper position and without uttering a word, the mind empty of any thought, good or wicked. It is continuing to sit peacefully, facing a wall, and nothing more. Every day.

Taisen Deshimaru

#10. 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.

Taisen Deshimaru

#11. Think with the whole body.

Taisen Deshimaru

#12. During zazen, brain and consciousness become pure. It's exactly like muddy water left to stand in a glass. Little by little, the sediment sinks to the bottom and the water becomes pure.

Taisen Deshimaru

#13. In a fight between a strong technique and a strong body, technique will prevail. In a fight between a strong mind and a strong technique, mind will prevail, because it will find the weak point.

Taisen Deshimaru

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

Taisen Deshimaru

#15. To receive everything, one must open one's hands and give.

Taisen Deshimaru

#16. 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!

Taisen Deshimaru

#17. Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." I say, "I do not think, that is why I exist."

Taisen Deshimaru

#18. If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.

Taisen Deshimaru

#19. Think with your whole body.

Taisen Deshimaru

#20. Everything in the universe is connected
Everything is osmosis
You cannot separate any part from the whole
Interdependence rules the cosmic order.

Taisen Deshimaru

#21. From your first day at school you are cut off from life to make theories.

Taisen Deshimaru

#22. Your world and the cat's world are not the same.

Taisen Deshimaru

#23. Time is not a line, but a series of now-points.

Taisen Deshimaru

#24. You have to practice until you die.

Taisen Deshimaru