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
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.
Each of us must make our own true way, and when we do, that way will express the universal way.
The true practice to meditation is to sit as if you where drinking water when you are thursty.
The purpose of our practice is just to be yourself.
In the mind of the beginner, there are many possibilities. In the mind of the expert there are few.
When you are just you, without thinking or trying to say something special, just saying what is on your mind and how you feel, then there is naturally self-respect.
Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink.
In reflecting on our problems, we should include ourselves.
If it is raining out, do not walk fast, because it is raining everywhere.
Wabi means spare, impoverished; simple and functional. It connotes a transcendence of fad and fashion. The spirit of wabi imbues all the Zen arts, from calligraphy to karate, from the tea ceremony to Zen archery.
To accept some idea of truth without experiencing it is like a painting of a cake on paper which you cannot eat.
The secret of zen is just two words: not... always... so.
When you say, "Wait a moment," you are bound by your karma; when you say "Yes I will," you are free.
If enlightenment comes first, before thinking, before practice, your thinking and your practice will not be self-centered. By enlightenment I mean believing in nothing, believing in something which has no form or no color, which is ready to take form or color. This enlightenment is the immutable truth. It is on this orginal truth that our activity, our thinking, and our practice should be based.