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The true practice to meditation is to sit as if you where drinking water when you are thirsty.

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
Water
True
Thirsty
Drinking
Meditation
Practice

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Zazen practice and everyday activity are one thing. We call zazen everyday life, and everyday life zazen.
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Discipline is creating the situation.
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Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there in the imperfection is perfect reality.
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Our mind should be free from traces of the past, just like the flowers of spring.
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The world is its own magic.
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The purpose of our practice is just to be yourself.
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When you say, Wait a moment, you are bound by your karma when you say Yes I will, you are free.
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To express yourself as you are, without any intentional, fancy way of adjusting yourself, is the most important thing.
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Someone was sitting in front of a sunflower, watching the sunflower, a cup of sun, and so I tried it too. It was wonderful I felt the whole universe in the sunflower. That was my experience. Sunflower meditation. A wonderful confidence appeared. You can see the whole universe in a flower.
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When you are fooled by something else, the damage will not be so big. But when you are fooled by yourself, it is fatal. No more medicine.
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The goal of our life’s effort is to reach the other shore, Nirvana. Prajna paramita, the true wisdom of life, is that in each step of the way, the other shore is actually reached.
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Let your ears hear without trying to hear. Let the mind think without trying to think and without trying to stop it. That is practice.
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Nothing outside yourself can cause any trouble. You yourself make the waves in your mind. If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm. This mind is called big mind.
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The highest truth is daiji, translated as dai jiki in Chinese scriptures. This is the subject of the question the emperor asked Bodhidharma: What is the First Principle? Bodhidharma said, I don't know. I don't know is the First Principle.
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Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.
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Moment after moment everything comes out of nothingness. This is the true joy of life.
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If you want to read a letter from the Buddha's world, it is necessary to understand Buddha's world.
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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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To be different is to have value. In this sense all things have equal, absolute value. Each thing has absolute value and thus is equal to everything else.
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People who know the state of emptiness will always be able to dissolve their problems by constancy.
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