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Religion is not any particular teaching. Religion is everywhere.

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
Everywhere
Teaching
Particular
Religion

More quotes by Shunryu Suzuki

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So when you try hard to make your own way, you will help others...before you make your own way you cannot help anyone, and no one can help you.
Shunryu Suzuki
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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.
Shunryu Suzuki
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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.
Shunryu Suzuki
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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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We must exist right here, right now!
Shunryu Suzuki
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You can't make a date with enlightenment.
Shunryu Suzuki
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If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything it is open to everything.
Shunryu Suzuki
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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.
Shunryu Suzuki
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When you sit, everything sits with you.
Shunryu Suzuki
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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.
Shunryu Suzuki
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An enlightened person does not ignore things and does not stick to things, not even to the truth.
Shunryu Suzuki
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A Master who cannot bow to a disciple cannot bow to Buddha.
Shunryu Suzuki
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When we become truly ourselves, we just become a swinging door, and we are purely independent of, and at the same time, dependent upon everything.
Shunryu Suzuki
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If you want to read a letter from the Buddha's world, it is necessary to understand Buddha's world.
Shunryu Suzuki
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A flower falls, even though we love it and a weed grows, even though we do not love it....In this way our life should be understood. Then there is no problem.
Shunryu Suzuki
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The way that helps will not be the same it changes according to the situation.
Shunryu Suzuki
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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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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.
Shunryu Suzuki
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To express yourself as you are, without any intentional, fancy way of adjusting yourself, is the most important thing.
Shunryu Suzuki
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After you have practiced for a while, you will realize that it is not possible to make rapid, extraordinary progress. Even though you try very hard, the progress you make is always little by little.
Shunryu Suzuki