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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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D.T. Suzuki
Experience
Facts
Form
Representations
Everything
Valued
Nothing
Representation
Symbols
Substance
Concepts

More quotes by D.T. Suzuki

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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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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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Unless it grows out of yourself no knowledge is really yours, it is only borrowed plumage.
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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To Zen, time and eternity are one.
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 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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Not to be bound by rules, but to be creating one's own rules-this is the kind of life which Zen is trying to have us live.
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 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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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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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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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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Zen Makes use, to a great extent, of poetical expressions Zen is wedded to poetry.
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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Fundamentally the marksman aims at himself.
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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To live - is that not enough?
D.T. Suzuki
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Zen has no business with ideas.
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