Shunryu Suzuki

For Zen students, a weed is a treasure.

If you take pride in your attainment or become discouraged because of your idealistic effort, your practice will confine you by a thick wall.

As long as you seek for something, you will get the shadow of reality and not reality itself.

No teaching could be more direct than just to sit down.

Everything is perfect, but there is a lot of room for improvement.

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.

Leave your front door and your back door open. _x000D_ Allow your thoughts to come and go. _x000D_ Just don't serve them tea.

When my master and I were walking in the rain, he would say, 'Do not walk so fast, the rain is everywhere.'

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.

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.

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.

People say that practicing Zen is difficult, but there is a misunderstanding as to why. It is not difficult because it is hard to sit in the cross- legged position, or to attain enlightenment. It is difficult because it is hard to keep our mind pure and our practice pure in its fundamental sense.

Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.

In your big mind, everything has the same value...In your practice you should accept everything as it is, giving to each thing the same respect given to a Buddha. Here there is Buddhahood

In order not to leave any traces, when you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely, a trace of yourself will be left in what you do. You should not have any remains after you do something. But this does not mean to forget all about it.

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

You should rather be grateful for the weeds you have in your mind, because eventually they will enrich your practice.

A student, filled with emotion and crying, implored, "Why is there so much suffering?" Suzuki Roshi replied, "No reason.

What we call "I" is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale.

Our way is to practice one step at a time, one breath at a time, with no gaining idea.

Everything you do is right, nothing you do is wrong, yet you must still make ceaseless effort.