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To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him.

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
Mischievous
Way
Meadows
Cows
Sheep
Large
Control
Spacious
Give
Meadow
Giving

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In the Lotus Sutra, Buddha says to light up one corner - not the whole world. Just make it clear where you are.
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Concentration comes not from trying hard to focus on something, but from keeping your mind open and directing it at nothing.
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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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It is a big mistake to think that the best way to express yourself is to do whatever you want, acting as you please. This is not expressing yourself. If you know what to do exactly, and you do it, then you can express yourself fully.
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Instead of criticizing, find out how to help.
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A tiger does not ignore or slight any small animal. The way he catches a mouse and catches and devours a cow are the same.
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Christopher McCandless:I will miss you too, but you are wrong if you think that the joy of life comes principally from the joy of human relationships. God's place is all around us, it is in everything and in anything we can experience. People just need to change the way they look at things.
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If you were not born in this world, there would be no need to die. To be born in this world is to die, to disappear [laughing].
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Life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact, we have no fear of death anymore, nor actual difficulty in our life.
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True communication depends upon our being straightforward with one another... But the best way to communicate may be just to sit without saying anything.
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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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The secret of Soto Zen is just two words: not always so.... In Japanese, it's two words, three words in English. That is the secret of our practice.
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A Master who cannot bow to a disciple cannot bow to Buddha.
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When he bowed to all those buddhas, the buddhas he bowed to were beyond his own understanding. Again and again he did it.
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If you cannot bow to Buddha, you cannot be a Buddha. It is arrogance.
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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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People say that practicing Zen is difficult, but there is a misunderstanding as to why. It is not difficult because it is hard to sit in the cross- legged position, or to attain enlightenment. It is difficult because it is hard to keep our mind pure and our practice pure in its fundamental sense.
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When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything. The best way is to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything.
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If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything it is open to everything.
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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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