The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious.
Interpretation
Understanding the unconscious mind is essential for personal growth and awareness.
D.T. Suzuki highlights the importance of aligning one's conscious thoughts with the deeper, often hidden currents of the unconscious mind. This attunement is essential for self-discovery, creativity, and a fuller understanding of oneself and the world. Engaging with the unconscious can lead to profound insights and growth, suggesting that true understanding comes from exploring beyond the surface of our thoughts and feelings.
In practice
In a seminar about mental health, you might say, 'As D.T. Suzuki once said, the mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious, emphasizing the need for deeper understanding of ourselves.'
Zen, in its essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one's own being, and it points the way from bondage to freedom. By making us drink right from the fountain of life it liberates us from all the yokes under which we finite beings are usually suffering in this world.
The basic idea of Zen is to come in touch with the inner workings of our being, and to do this in the most direct way possible, without resorting to anything external or superadded. Therefore, anything that has the semblance of an external authority is rejected by Zen. Absolute faith is placed in a man's own inner being. For whatever authority there is in Zen, all comes from within.
Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?
The rocks are where they are- and this is their will. The rivers flow- and this is their will. The birds fly- this is their will. Human beings talk- this is their will. The seasons change, heaven sends down rain or snow, the earth occasionally shakes, the waves roll, the stars shine- each of them follows its own will. To be is to will and so is to become.
Enlightenment is like everyday consciousness but two inches above the ground.
We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.
To practice Zen or the Martial Arts, you must live intensely, wholeheartedly, without reserve - as if you might die in the next instant
The character of God is today, and always will be, exactly what it was in Bible times.
The growth of our knowledge is the result of a process closely resembling what Darwin called 'natural selection'; that is, the natural selection of hypotheses: our knowledge consists, at every moment, of those hypotheses which have shown their (comparative) fitness by surviving so far in their struggle for existence, a competitive struggle which eliminates those hypotheses which are unfit.
Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.
Hong Kong people say Hong Kong needs to preserve its uniqueness. I say Hong Kong's uniqueness is in its diversity, its tolerance of difference cultures... China does not want to see Hong Kong in decline. I have full confidence in its future.
The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy...
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