Shunryu Suzuki
Shunryu Suzuki
Shunryu Suzukiwas a Sōtō Zen monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States, and is renowned for founding the first Buddhist monastery outside Asia. Suzuki founded San Francisco Zen Center, which along with its affiliate temples, comprises one of the most influential Zen organizations in the United States. A book of his teachings, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, is one of the most popular books on Zen and Buddhism in the West...
NationalityJapanese
ProfessionLeader
Date of Birth18 May 1904
CountryJapan
So when you try hard to make your own way, you will help others...before you make your own way you cannot help anyone, and no one can help you.
Even if the sun were to rise from the west, the Bodhisattva has only one way.
Discipline is creating the situation.
The Zen way of calligraphy is to write in the most straightforward, simple way as if you were a beginner, not trying to make something skillful or beautiful, but simply writing with full attention as if you were discovering what you were writing for the first time; then your full nature will be in your writing.
If I tell you something, you will stick to it and limit your own capacity to find out for yourself.
Instead of respecting things, we want to use them for ourselves and if it is difficult to use them, we want to conquer them.
The highest truth is daiji, translated as dai jiki in Chinese scriptures. This is the subject of the question the emperor asked Bodhidharma: "What is the First Principle?" Bodhidharma said, "I don't know." "I don't know" is the First Principle.
There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love...Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self-love bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.
It is a big mistake to think that the best way to express yourself is to do whatever you want, acting as you please. This is not expressing yourself. If you know what to do exactly, and you do it, then you can express yourself fully.
There will always be war, but we must always work to oppose it.
If you take pride in your attainment or become discouraged because of your idealistic effort, your practice will confine you by a thick wall.
You must be true to your own way until at last you actually come to the point where you see it is necessary to forget all about yourself.
We try, and we try, and we fail; and then we go deeper.
If you continue this simple practice every day, you will obtain some wonderful power. Before you attain it, it is something wonderful, but after you attain it, it is nothing special.