Quote

The right art is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede.

D.T. Suzuki

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D.T. Suzuki
Goal
Archery
Less
Arrow
Learn
Arrows
Art
Hitting
Right
Shoot
Obstinately
Trying
Difficulty
Recede
Sake
Purposeless
Succeed
Aimless

More quotes by D.T. Suzuki

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I am an artist at living - my work of art is my life.
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We can see unmistakeably that there is an inner relationship between Zen and the warrior's life.
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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?
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Prophecy is rash, but it may be that the publication of D.T. Suzuki's first Essays in Zen Buddhism in 1927 will seem to future generations as great an intellectual event as William of Moerbeke's Latin translations of Aristotle in the thirteenth century or Marsiglio Ficino's of Plato in the fifteenth.
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The truth of Zen is the truth of life, and life means to live, to move, to act, not merely to reflect.
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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?
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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Zen has no business with ideas.
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Implicity, there should be something mysterious in every day.
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You ought to know how to rise above the trivialities of life, in which most people are found drowning themselves.
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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.
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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.
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When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect the mountain exercises vanishes into the air.
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Zen in it's essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one's being, and it points the way from bondage to freedom.
D.T. Suzuki
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Dhyana is retaining one's tranquil state of mind in any circumstance, unfavorable as well as favorable, and not being disturbed or frustrated even when adverse conditions present themselves one after another.
D.T. Suzuki
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Fundamentally the marksman aims at himself.
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Unless we die to ourselves, we can never be alive again.
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