When the restrictions you have do not limit you, this is what we mean by practice.

When you are fooled by something else, the damage will not be so big. But when you are fooled by yourself, it is fatal. No more medicine.

If you understand real practice, then archery or other activities can be zen. If you don't understand how to practice archery in its true sense, then even though you practice very hard, what you acquire is just technique. It won't help you through and through. Perhaps you can hit the mark without trying, but without a bow and arrow you cannot do anything. If you understand the point of practice, then even without a bow and arrow the archery will help you. How you get that kind of power or ability is only through right practice.

To have some deep feeling about Buddhism is not the point; we just do what we should do, like eating supper and going to bed. This is Buddhism.

As long as we have some definite idea about or some hope in the future, we cannot really be serious with the moment that exists right now.

There is no need to have a deep understanding of Zen.

If you want to study Zen, you should forget all your previous ideas and just practice zazen and see what kind of experience you have in your practice. That is naturalness.

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as an enlightened person. There is only enlightened activity.

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.

There should not be any particular teaching. Teaching is in each moment.

The point we emphasize is strong confidence in our original nature.

It is easy to have calmness in inactivity, it is hard to have calmness in activity, but calmness in activity is true calmness.

If your practice is good, you may become proud of it. What you do is good, but something more is added to it. Pride is extra. Right effort is to get rid of something extra.

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 original truth that our activity, our thinking, and our practice should be based.

In the zazen posture, your mind and body have great power to accept things as they are, whether agreeable or disagreeable.

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.

If I tell you something, you will stick to it and limit your own capacity to find out for yourself.

To renounce things is not to give them up. It is to acknowledge that all things go away.

When you are practicing zazen, do not try to stop your thinking. Let it stop by itself. If something comes into your mind, let it come in, and let it go out. It will not stay long. When you try to stop your thinking, it means you are bothered by it. Do not be bothered by anything. It appears as if something comes from outside your mind, but actually it is only the waves of your mind, and if you are not bothered by the waves, gradually they will become calmer and calmer.

To be different is to have value. In this sense all things have equal, absolute value. Each thing has absolute value and thus is equal to everything else.

Instead of respecting things, we want to use them for ourselves and if it is difficult to use them, we want to conquer them.

A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it....In this way our life should be understood. Then there is no problem.

When you try to attain something, your mind starts to wander about somewhere else. When you do not try to attain anything, you have your own body and mind right here. In Buddhism it is a heretical view to expect something outside this world. We do not seek for something besides ourselves.