Quotes from Shunryu Suzuki

To take this posture itself is the purpose of our practice.

To live in the realm of Buddha nature means to die as a small being, moment after moment.

Actually the best way to relieve your mental suffering is to sit in zazen, even in such a confused state of mind and bad posture.

Try not to force your idea on someone, but rather think about it with him. If you feel you have won the discussion, that is the wrong attitude. Try not to win the argument; just listen to it.

But if you make your best effort just to continue your practice with your whole mind and body, without gaining ideas, then whatever you do will be true practice.

While you are continuing this practice, week after week, year after year, your experience will become deeper and deeper, and your experience will cover everything you do in your everyday life.

Our effort in our practice should be directed from achievement to non-achievement.

Pleasure is not different from difficulty. Good is not different from bad. Bad is good; good is bad. They are two sides of one coin. So enlightenment should be in practice. That is the right understanding of practice, and the right understanding of our life. So to find pleasure in suffering is the only way to accept the truth of transiency.

when you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely... You should burn yourself completely.

If you want to discover the true meaning of Zen in your everyday life, you have to understand the meaning of keeping your mind on your breathing and your body in the right posture in zazen.

So even though you have some difficulty in your practice, even though you have some waves while you are sitting, those waves themselves will help you.

But the way of practice is just to be concentrated on your breathing with the right posture and with great, pure effort.

For the beginner, practice without effort is not true practice.

Sincerity itself is the railroad track.

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.

When we hear the sound of the pine trees on a windy day, perhaps the wind is just blowing, and the pine tree is just standing in the wind. That is all they are doing. But the people who listen to the wind in the tree will write a poem, or will feel something unusual. That is, I think, the way everything is.

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.

The trying to do something is in itself enlightenment. When we are in difficulty or distress, there we have enlightenment.

A master who cannot bow to his disciple cannot bow to Buddha.

To cook is not just to prepare food for someone or 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; you should work on it with nothing in your mind, and without expecting anything. You should just cook!

This is the mystery. When you understand one thing through and through, you understand everything. When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything. The best way is to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything. So when you try hard to make your own way, you will help others, and you will be helped by others. Before you make your own way you cannot help anyone, and no one can help you. To

Our way is not to sit to acquire something; it is to express our true nature. That is our practice.

Those who are attached only to the result of their effort will not have any chance to appreciate it, because the result will never come.

The important thing in our understanding is to have a smooth, free-thinking way of observation. We have to think and to observe things without stagnation. We should accept things as they are without difficulty. Ou mind should be soft and open enough to understand things as they are. When our thinking is soft, it is called imperturbable thinking. This kind of thinking is always stable. It is called mindfulness.