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Our practice should be based on the ideal of selflessness. Selflessness is very difficult to understand. If you try to be selfless, that is already a selfish idea. Selflessness will be there when you do not try anything.

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
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Anything
Selfish
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Practice
Idea
Selflessness
Understand
Selfless
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Ideal

More quotes by Shunryu Suzuki

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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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Although we have no actual written communications from the world of emptiness, we have some hints or suggestions about what is going on in that world, and that is, you might say, enlightenment. When you see plum blossoms or hear the sound of a small stone hitting bamboo, that is a letter from the world of emptiness.
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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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Zazen practice is the direct expression of our true nature. Strictly speaking, for a human being, there is no other practice than this practice there is no other way of life than this way of life.
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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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Shunryu Suzuki