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Life, according to Zen, ought to be lived as a bird flies through the air, or as a fish swims in the water.

D.T. Suzuki

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

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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.
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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Zen Makes use, to a great extent, of poetical expressions Zen is wedded to poetry.
D.T. Suzuki
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Zen wants us to acquire an entirely new point of view whereby to look into the mysteries of life and the secrets of nature. This is because Zen has come to the definite conclusion that the ordinary logical process of reasoning is powerless to give final satisfaction to our deepest spiritual needs.
D.T. Suzuki
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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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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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Suzuki's works on Zen Buddhism are among the best contributions to the knowledge of living Buddhism... We cannot be sufficiently grateful to the author, first for the fact of his having brought Zen closer to Western understanding, and secondly for the manner in which he has achieved this task.
D.T. Suzuki
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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.
D.T. Suzuki
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We can see unmistakeably that there is an inner relationship between Zen and the warrior's life.
D.T. Suzuki
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The mistake consists in our splitting into two what is really and absolutely one. Is not life one as we live it, which we cut to pieces by recklessly applying the murderous knife of intellectual surgery?
D.T. Suzuki
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Implicity, there should be something mysterious in every day.
D.T. Suzuki
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Zen opens a man's eyes to the greatest mystery as it is daily and hourly performed it enlarges the heart to embrace eternity of time and infinity of space in its every palpitation it makes us live in the world as if walking in the garden of Eden
D.T. Suzuki
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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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Unless it grows out of yourself no knowledge is really yours, it is only borrowed plumage.
D.T. Suzuki
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One has not understood until one has forgotten it.
D.T. Suzuki
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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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Eternity is the Absolute present.
D.T. Suzuki
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Zen has no business with ideas.
D.T. Suzuki
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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?
D.T. Suzuki
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When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect the mountain exercises vanishes into the air.
D.T. Suzuki