For Zen students, a weed is a treasure.
Shunryu SuzukiRead
The point we emphasize is strong confidence in our original nature.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the importance of having confidence in one's true self.
Shunryu Suzuki emphasizes the significance of having a strong belief in our original nature, which reflects our authentic self. This confidence is essential for personal growth and self-acceptance, allowing individuals to navigate life with assurance and clarity.
In practice
During a motivational speech to inspire self-acceptance among students.
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.
You don't start at the top if you want to find the story. You start in the middle, because it's the people in the middle who do the actual work in the world.
You cannot be a Big person with a Small heart
Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.
Young people have a right to optimism, and rightly so; human beings have grown and developed and accomplished wonderful feats in the world. But what mires me in pessimism is the fact that so much of life is pain and sorrow and willful ignorance and violence, and pushing back against that tide takes so much effort, so much steady fight. It's tiring.
To write is human, to edit is divine.
There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things we could use.
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