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The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one's humdrum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity.

D.T. Suzuki

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D.T. Suzuki
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More quotes by D.T. Suzuki

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Fundamentally the marksman aims at himself.
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The claim of the Zen followers that they are transmitting the essence of Buddhism is based on their belief that Zen takes hold of the enlivening spirit of the Buddha, stripped of all its historical and doctrinal garments.
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Facts of experience are valued in Zen more than representations, symbols, and concepts-that is to say, substance is everything in Zen and form nothing.
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The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious.
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To live - is that not enough?
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The contradiction so puzzling to the ordinary way of thinking comes from the fact that we have to use language to communicate our inner experience, which in its very nature transcends linguistics.
D.T. Suzuki
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When we start to feel anxious or depressed, instead of asking, What do I need to get to be happy? The question becomes, What am I doing to disturb the inner peace that I already have?
D.T. Suzuki
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Unless it grows out of yourself no knowledge is really yours, it is only borrowed plumage.
D.T. Suzuki
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The more you suffer the deeper grows your character, and with the deepening of your character you read the more penetratingly into the secrets of life. All great artists, all great religious leaders, and all great social reformers have come out of the intensest struggles which they fought bravely, quite frequently in tears and with bleeding hearts
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Zen has nothing to teach us in the way of intellectual analysis nor has it any set doctrines which are imposed on its followers for acceptance.
D.T. Suzuki
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The fighter is to be always single-minded with one object in view: to fight, looking neither backward nor sidewise. To go straight forward in order to crush the enemy is all that is necessary for him.
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Though perhaps less universally known than such figures as Einstein or Gandhi (who became symbols of our time) Daisetz Suzuki was no less remarkable a man than these. And though his work may not have had such resounding and public effect, he contributed no little to the spiritual and intellectual revolution of our time.
D.T. Suzuki
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Among the most remarkable features characterizing Zen we find these: spirituality, directness of expression, disregard of form or conventionalism, and frequently an almost wanton delight in going astray from respectability.
D.T. Suzuki
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The worst passion we mortals cherish is the desire to possess. Even when we know that our final destination is a hole not more than three feet square, we have the strongest craving
D.T. Suzuki
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The waters are in motion, but the moon retains its serenity.
D.T. Suzuki
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One has not understood until one has forgotten it.
D.T. Suzuki
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Let the intellect alone, it has its usefulness in its proper sphere, but let it not interfere with the flowing of the life-stream.
D.T. Suzuki
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Because since the beginningless past we are running after objects, not knowing where our Self is, we lose track of the Original Mind and are tormented all the time by the threatening objective world, regarding it as good or bad, true or false, agreeable or disagreeable. We are thus slaves of things and circumstances.
D.T. Suzuki
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Zen professes itself to be the spirit of Buddhism, but in fact it is the spirit of all religions and philosophies.
D.T. Suzuki
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Zen is the spirit of a man. Zen believes in his inner purity and goodness. Whatever is superadded or violently torn away, injures the wholesomeness of the spirit. Zen, therefore, is emphatically against all religious conventionalism.
D.T. Suzuki