Quotes from Dainin Katagiri

If you want to find Buddha nature, love someone and care for them.

Make positive effort for the good.

The important point of spiritual practice is not to try to escape your life, but to face it - exactly and completely.

You cannot find any peace by escaping from human pain and suffering; you have to find peace and harmony right in the midst of human pain. That is the purpose of spiritual life

Spiritual security means you are fully alive and comfortable in your life as it is, without expecting anything.

Accept that your life is going on beyond your usual understanding.

If you want to take care of tomorrow, take better care of today. We always live now. All we have to do is entrust ourselves to the life we now live.

The point of the spiritual life is to realize Truth. But you will never understand the spiritual life, or realize Truth, if you measure it by your own yardstick.

The important point of spiritual practice is not to try to escape your life, but to face it - exactly and completely.

The moment that you are living right now is a very important opportunity to make your life vividly alive.

before your mind starts to work and you want to run away, accept every moment as an opportunity presented to you to practice facing reality as it really is.

Life and death occur in a moment. In other words, life and death are nothing but moment. You don't believe that your life is a moment, because in everyday life you always have lots of choices. But if you see death, you taste it immediately. Moment and you come together, creating the momentum energy of time, and you and death become one; you have no choice.

The truth of life is just to live.

Detachment doesn't mean you should ignore form; it means you have to attach to form through and through. A form may bother you, but you need form because you love truth, you love peace, you love life itself.

Consideration of others extends beyond just other human beings to include all things—tables, cushions, even toilet paper. We must be considerate of all things and treat them with great appreciation and respect.

Keep your mouth shut and look directly at impermanence!

If you don't understand, please keep your mouth shut and just live with all sentient beings in peace and harmony beyond your intellectual speculation. It's not necessary to think how much that helps people or how many people it helps. All you have to do is be peaceful with people right now, right here, day by day.

if you want to make a vivid statement about yourself, say you are kiya—arising only!

This is why everyday life—daily routine—is very important for us. It can let us be free from time.

If you try to examine your life analytically, asking yourself who you are, finally you will realize that there is something you cannot reach. You don't know what it is, but you feel the presence of something you want to connect with. This is sometimes called the absolute. Buddha and Dogen Zenji say true self. Christians say God.

So we have to find the realm of buddhas within the realm of demons. In other words, in the realm of pain and suffering, we have to find the realm of peace and harmony. This is religious practice.

Zazen doesn't give you something—it's the complete opposite!

Everydayness perfumes the depth of life, the huge ocean where all are interconnected, and makes your life mature. Then a new life arises from the depth and appears on the surface. So, by taking care of everydayness, you don't make just the surface mature; you also make the depth of your life mature.

You are connected with all beings in time, which permeates into every inch of the cosmic universe, and space, where everyone and everything exists together in peace and harmony.