Quote

To express yourself as you are, without any intentional, fancy way of adjusting yourself, is the most important thing.

Shunryu Suzuki

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Shunryu Suzuki
Age: 67 †
Born: 1904
Born: May 18
Died: 1971
Died: December 4
Bhikkhu
Leader
Missionary
Philosopher
Writer
Atlanta
Georgia
Fancy
Express
Without
Important
Thing
Way
Intentional
Adjusting

More quotes by Shunryu Suzuki

Image
When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.
Shunryu Suzuki
Image
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
Image
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.
Shunryu Suzuki
Image
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
Image
Our mind should be free from traces of the past, just like the flowers of spring.
Shunryu Suzuki
Image
We must exist right here, right now!
Shunryu Suzuki
Image
The true practice to meditation is to sit as if you where drinking water when you are thirsty.
Shunryu Suzuki
Image
When you do something, if you fix your mind on the activity with some confidence, the quality of your state of mind is the activity itself. When you are concentrated on the quality of your being, you are prepared for the activity.
Shunryu Suzuki
Image
In your everyday life you always have opportunities for enlightenment. If you go to the rest room, there is a chance to attain enlightenment. When you cook, there is a chance to attain enlightenment. When you clean the floor, there is a chance to attain enlightenment.
Shunryu Suzuki
Image
There should not be any particular teaching. Teaching is in each moment.
Shunryu Suzuki
Image
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.
Shunryu Suzuki
Image
When you sit, everything sits with you.
Shunryu Suzuki
Image
If you think your body and mind are two, that is wrong if you think that they are one, that is also wrong. Our body and mind are both two and one.
Shunryu Suzuki
Image
Instead of respecting things, we want to use them for ourselves and if it is difficult to use them, we want to conquer them.
Shunryu Suzuki
Image
To accept some idea of truth without experiencing it is like a painting of a cake on paper which you cannot eat.
Shunryu Suzuki
Image
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.
Shunryu Suzuki
Image
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.
Shunryu Suzuki
Image
You will always exist in the universe in one form or another.
Shunryu Suzuki
Image
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.
Shunryu Suzuki
Image
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.
Shunryu Suzuki