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Zen is everywhere.... But for you, Zen is right here.

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
Right

More quotes by Shunryu Suzuki

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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.
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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To cook is not just to prepare food for someone or to cook for yourself it is to express your sincerity. So when you cook you should express yourself in your activity in the kitchen. You should allow yourself plenty of time.
Shunryu Suzuki
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Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.
Shunryu Suzuki
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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.
Shunryu Suzuki
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Zazen practice and everyday activity are one thing. We call zazen everyday life, and everyday life zazen.
Shunryu Suzuki
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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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Concentration comes not from trying hard to focus on something, but from keeping your mind open and directing it at nothing.
Shunryu Suzuki
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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.
Shunryu Suzuki
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Meditation opens the mind to the greatest mystery that takes place daily and hourly it widens the heart so that it may feel the eternity of time and infinity of space in every throb it gives us a life within the world as if we were moving about in paradise.
Shunryu Suzuki
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If you take pride in your attainment or become discouraged because of your idealistic effort, your practice will confine you by a thick wall.
Shunryu Suzuki
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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
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All descriptions of reality are limited expressions of the world of emptiness. Yet we attach to the descriptions and think they are reality. That is a mistake.
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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You see something or hear a sound, and there you have everything just as it is. [...] Whatever you do, it should be an expression of the same deep activity. We should appreciate what we are doing. There is no preparation for something else.
Shunryu Suzuki
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Zen is not some fancy, special art of living. Our teaching is just to live, always in reality, in its exact sense. To make our effort, moment after moment, is our way.
Shunryu Suzuki
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In your big mind, everything has the same value...In your practice you should accept everything as it is, giving to each thing the same respect given to a Buddha. Here there is Buddhahood
Shunryu Suzuki
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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.
Shunryu Suzuki
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Our mind should be free from traces of the past, just like the flowers of spring.
Shunryu Suzuki
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Time goes from present to past.
Shunryu Suzuki