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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.

D.T. Suzuki

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D.T. Suzuki
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More quotes by 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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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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Zen has no business with ideas.
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 mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious.
D.T. Suzuki
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Implicity, there should be something mysterious in every day.
D.T. Suzuki
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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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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.
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
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.
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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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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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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Zen teaches nothing it merely enables us to wake up and become aware. It does not teach, it points.
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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Enlightenment is like everyday consciousness but two inches above the ground.
D.T. Suzuki
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Art always has something of the unconscious about it.
D.T. Suzuki
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When I say that Zen is life, I mean that Zen is not to be confined within conceptualization, that Zen is what makes conceptualization possible.
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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When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect the mountain exercises vanishes into the air.
D.T. Suzuki