"You can practice thinking, but the answer you get by thinking
is not [the] only answer you should know."
-Shunryu Suzuki
"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities,
but in the expert's mind there are few."
-Shunryu Suzuki
"The most important thing is to find out what is the most important thing."
-Shunryu Suzuki
"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."
-Shunryu Suzuki
"You want to eliminate your evil desires in order to reveal your Buddha nature, but where will you throw them away?"
-Shunryu Suzuki
"The world is its own magic."
-Shunryu Suzuki
“Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there in the imperfection is perfect reality.”
-Shunryu Suzuki
"When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely,
like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself"
-Shunryu Suzuki
“When something dies is the greatest teaching.”
-Shunryu Suzuki
"Usually when someone believes in a particular religion, his attitude becomes more and more a sharp angle pointing away from himself. In our way the point of the angle is always toward ourselves."
-Shunryu Suzuki
“What we call 'I' is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale.”
-Shunryu Suzuki
"Zen is not some kind of excitement,
but concentration on our usual everyday routine."
-Shunryu Suzuki
"If it is raining out, do not walk fast, because it is raining everywhere."
-Shunryu Suzuki
“A student, filled with emotion and crying, implored, 'Why is there so much suffering?'
Suzuki Roshi replied, 'No reason.'"
“Time goes from present to past.”
-Shunryu Suzuki
“Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink.”
-Shunryu Suzuki
"Hell is not punishment. It's training."
-Shunryu Suzuki
"Our tendency is to be interested in something that is growing in the garden, not in the bare soil itself. But if you want to have a good harvest, the most important thing is to make the soil rich and cultivate it well."
-Shunryu Suzuki
"Enjoy your problems."
-Shunryu Suzuki
"So the secret is just to say 'Yes!' and jump off from here. Then there is no problem. It means to be yourself, always yourself, without sticking to an old self." -Shunryu Suzuki
"Life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact, we have no fear of death anymore, nor actual difficulty in our life."
-Shunryu Suzuki
"As soon as you see something, you already start to intellectualize it. As soon as you intellectualize something, it is no longer what you saw."
-Shunryu Suzuki