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When you sit, everything sits with you.

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
Everything
Sits
Meditation

More quotes by Shunryu Suzuki

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When the restrictions you have do not limit you, this is what we mean by practice.
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The world is its own magic.
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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.
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Don't move. Just die over and over. Don't anticipate. Nothing can save you now because you have only this moment. Not even enlightenment will help you now because there are no other moments. With no future, be true to yourself and express yourself fully. Don't move.
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Each of you is perfect the way you are ... and you can use a little improvement.
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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.
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There are, strictly speaking, no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity.
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In the zazen posture, your mind and body have, great power to accept things as they are, whether agreeable or disagreeable.
Shunryu Suzuki
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There is no connection between I myself yesterday and I myself in this moment
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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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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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.
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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Discipline is creating the situation.
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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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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Things are always changing, so nothing can be yours.
Shunryu Suzuki
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We ourselves cannot put any magic spells on this world. The world is its own magic.
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.
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