Quotes from Dogen

Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment.

When both body and mind are at peace, all things appear as they are: perfect, complete, lacking nothing.

If he cannot stop the mind that seeks after fame and profit, he will spend his life without finding peace.

What you think in your own mind to be good, or what people of the world think is good, is not necessarily good.

Why abandon a seat in your own home to wander in vain through dusty regions of another land? If you make one false step, you miss what is right before your eyes.

Because mountains are high and broad, the way of riding the clouds is always reached in the mountains; the inconceivable power of soaring in the wind comes freely from the mountains

To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things.

Mountains and rivers at this very moment are the actualization of the world of the ancient Buddhas. Each, abiding in its phenomenal expression, realizes completeness.

A flower falls, even though we love it and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.

If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?

To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.

Forgetting oneself is opening oneself

When you ride in a boat and watch the shore, you might assume that the shore is moving. But when you keep your eyes closely on the boat, you can see that the boat moves. Similarly, if you examine many things with a confused mind, you might suppose that your mind and nature are permanent. But when you practice intimately and return to where you are, it will be clear that there is nothing that has unchanging self.

do not view mountains from the scale of human thought

In a snowfall that covers the winter grass a white heron uses his own whiteness to disappear.

Although its light is wide and great, the Moon is reflected in a puddle one inch wide. The whole Moon and the entire sky is reflected in one dew drop on the grass.

A zen master's life is one continuous mistake.

When we discover that the truth is already in us, we are all at once our original selves.

Zazen is an activity that is an extension of the universe. Zazen is not the life of an individual, it's the universe that's breathing.

Students today should live fully every moment of time. This dew-like life fades away; time speeds swiftly. In this short life of ours, avoid involvement in superfluous things and just study the Way.

Those who see worldly life as an obstacle to Dharma see no Dharma in everyday actions. They have not yet discovered that there are no everyday actions outside of Dharma.

If you want to do a certain thing, you first have to be a certain person. Once you become that certain person, you will not care anymore about doing that certain thing.

To start from the self and try to understand all things is delusion. To let the self be awakened by all things is enlightenment.

You should study not only that you become a mother when your child is born, but also that you become a child.