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Happiness is sorrow sorrow is happiness. There is happiness in difficulty difficulty in happiness. Even though the ways we feel are different, they are not really different, in essence they are the same. This is the true understanding transmitted from Buddha to us.

Shunryu Suzuki

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Shunryu Suzuki
Age: 67 †
Born: 1904
Born: May 18
Died: 1971
Died: December 4
Bhikkhu
Leader
Missionary
Philosopher
Writer
Atlanta
Georgia
Feels
Sorrow
Different
Essence
Even
Ways
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Though
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Understanding
Transmitted
Happiness
Buddha
True
Buddhist
Feel
Difficulty

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All descriptions of reality are limited expressions of the world of emptiness. Yet we attach to the descriptions and think they are reality. That is a mistake.
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You see something or hear a sound, and there you have everything just as it is. [...] Whatever you do, it should be an expression of the same deep activity. We should appreciate what we are doing. There is no preparation for something else.
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The way that helps will not be the same it changes according to the situation.
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Time goes from present to past.
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If you want to study Zen, you should forget all your previous ideas and just practice zazen and see what kind of experience you have in your practice. That is naturalness.
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It is only by practicing through a continual succession of agreeable and disagreeable situations that we acquire true strengths. To accept that pain is inherent and to live our lives from this understanding is to create the causes and conditions for happiness.
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Instead of respecting things, we want to use them for ourselves and if it is difficult to use them, we want to conquer them.
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It is easy to have calmness in inactivity, it is hard to have calmness in activity, but calmness in activity is true calmness.
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There will always be war, but we must always work to oppose it.
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The more you practice zazen, the more you will be able to accept something as your own, whatever it is.
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A Master who cannot bow to a disciple cannot bow to Buddha.
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To accept some idea of truth without experiencing it is like a painting of a cake on paper which you cannot eat.
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