For Zen students, a weed is a treasure.
Shunryu SuzukiRead
Our way is to practice one step at a time, one breath at a time, with no gaining idea.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes mindfulness and the importance of taking each moment as it comes.
Shunryu Suzuki's quote encourages a mindset of living in the present, advocating for a patient and deliberate approach to life. By focusing on one step and one breath at a time, it suggests that we can cultivate awareness and clarity without being distracted by the desire for progress or achievements.
Themes
MindfulnessPresentPatienceAwarenessStep
In practice
Example use cases
In a meditation workshop, when discussing mindfulness, this quote can serve as a reminder to participants.
More from Shunryu Suzuki
All quotes →If 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
Everything is perfect, but there is a lot of room for improvement.
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
Similar quotes
According to Buddhist scriptures, compassion is the "quivering of the pure heart" when we have allowed ourselves to be touched by the pain of life.
Jack KornfieldRead
Order - Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
Benjamin FranklinRead
It is great that even before we become enlightened or generate any lam-rim realizations we are able to offer incredible benefit to others. The person who does this is a very fortunate person and should rejoice very often.
Thubten Zopa RinpocheRead
Estragon: I'm like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget.
Samuel BeckettRead
Throw away my book: you must understand that it represents only one of a thousand attitudes. You must find your own. If someone else could have done something as well as you, don’t do it. If someone else could have said something as well as you, don’t say it—or written something as well as you, don’t write it. Grow fond only of that which you can find nowhere but in yourself, and create out of yourself, impatiently or patiently, ah! that most irreplaceable of beings.
Andre GideRead
Devotion is diligence without assurance. Faith is a way of saying "Yes, I pre-accept the terms of the universe and I embrace in advance what I am presently incapable of understanding.
Elizabeth GilbertRead