For Zen students, a weed is a treasure.
Shunryu SuzukiRead
Everything is perfect, but there is a lot of room for improvement.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the notion that while things may seem ideal, there is always potential for growth and enhancement.
Shunryu Suzuki emphasizes the idea that perfection is a relative term and that despite the beauty and completeness of the present moment, there is always an opportunity for improvement. This perspective encourages continuous development and fosters an attitude of mindfulness, where one appreciates the current state while recognizing the potential for further growth and evolution.
Themes
ImprovementPerfectionGrowthMindfulnessDevelopment
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about personal growth.
More from Shunryu Suzuki
All quotes βIf you take pride in your attainment or become discouraged because of your idealistic effort, your practice will confine you by a thick wall.
Shunryu SuzukiRead
As long as you seek for something, you will get the shadow of reality and not reality itself.
Shunryu SuzukiRead
No teaching could be more direct than just to sit down.
Shunryu SuzukiRead
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 SuzukiRead
Leave your front door and your back door open. _x000D_ Allow your thoughts to come and go. _x000D_ Just don't serve them tea.
Shunryu SuzukiRead
Similar quotes
As a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing,but does only and wholly what he must do.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
This is the greatest gift God can give you: to understand what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been searching for.
Mitch AlbomRead
The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
Our task is to listen to the news that is always arriving out of silence.
Rainer Maria RilkeRead
Know how to choose well. Most of life depends thereon. It needs good taste and correct judgment, for which neither intellect nor study suffices.
Baltasar GracianRead
You yourself are the teacher, and the pupil, you're the master, you're the guru, you are the leader, you are everything! And, to understand is to transform what is.
Jiddu KrishnamurtiRead