Shunryu Suzuki Quotes

Quotes about:

• Leave your front door and your back door open.
  Allow your thoughts to come and go.
  Just don't serve them tea.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Doors, Tea, Comes And Goes

  124 Copy quote

• Wherever you go you will find your teacher, as long as you have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Teacher, Eye, Long

  88 Copy quote

• When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything. The best way is to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Self, Trying, Way

  Shunryū Suzuki, Trudy Dixon, Richard Baker (2006). “Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind”, p.136, Shambhala Publications

  19 Copy quote

• Moment after moment everything comes out of nothingness. This is the true joy of life.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  True Joy, Moments, Joy Of Life

  40 Copy quote

• How much 'ego' do you need? Just enough so that you don't step in front of a bus.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Ego, Needs, Steps

  71 Copy quote

• Everything is perfect, but there is a lot of room for improvement.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Perfect, Rooms, Improvement

  66 Copy quote

• If you can just appreciate each thing, one by one, then you will have pure gratitude. Even though you observe just one flower, that one flower includes everything

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Gratitude, Flower, Appreciate

  Shunryu Suzuki (1999). “Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness: Zen Talks on the Sandokai”, p.88, Univ of California Press

  96 Copy quote

• Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Yoga, Buddhism, Mma

  99 Copy quote

• Nothing outside yourself can cause any trouble. You yourself make the waves in your mind. If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm. This mind is called big mind.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Mind, Causes, Calm

  Shunryu Suzuki (2010). “Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind”, p.18, Shambhala Publications

  107 Copy quote

• Faith is a state of openness or trust...In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all. Instead they are holding tight. But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to the truth, whatever it might turn out to be.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Faith, Letting Go, Attitude

  70 Copy quote

• As soon as you see something, you already start to intellectualize it. As soon as you intellectualize something, it is no longer what you saw.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Saws, Awareness

  86 Copy quote

• Hell is not punishment, it's training.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Punishment, Training, Hell

  23 Copy quote

• Whereever you are, you are one with the clouds and one with the sun and the stars you see. You are one with everything. That is more true than I can say, and more true than you can hear.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Life, Stars, Clouds

  65 Copy quote

• Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  12 Copy quote

• Instead of criticizing, find out how to help.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Helping, Criticize

  77 Copy quote

• When my master and I were walking in the rain, he would say, 'Do not walk so fast, the rain is everywhere.'

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Fun, Rain, Masters

  76 Copy quote

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

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Easy, Calmness, Inactivity

  Shunryu Suzuki (2010). “Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind”, p.31, Shambhala Publications

  66 Copy quote

• 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.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Way, Lasts, Forget

  Shunryu Suzuki (2010). “Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind”, p.27, Shambhala Publications

  8 Copy quote

• The most important point is to accept yourself and stand on your two feet.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Two, Feet, Important

  93 Copy quote

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

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Enlightened, Persons, Activity

  31 Copy quote

• So for a period of time each day, try to sit, without moving, without expecting anything, as if you were in your last moment. Moment after moment you feel your last instant. In each inhalation and each exhalation there are countless instants of time. Your intention is to live in each instant.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Time, Moving, Trying

  21 Copy quote

• So the most difficult thing is always to keep your beginner's mind. There is no need to have a deep understanding of Zen. Even though you read much Zen literature, you must read each sentence with a fresh mind. You should not say, "I know what Zen is," or "I have attained enlightenment." This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner. Be very very careful about this point. If you start to practice zazen, you will begin to appreciate your beginner's mind. It is the secret of Zen practice.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Art, Real, Practice

  8 Copy quote

• In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.... In the beginner's mind there is no thought, 'I have attained something.' All self-centered thoughts limit our vast mind. When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners. We can really learn something.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Self, Meditation, Achievement

  74 Copy quote

• It is only by practicing through a continual succession of agreeable and disagreeable situations that we acquire true strengths. To accept that pain is inherent and to live our lives from this understanding is to create the causes and conditions for happiness.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Pain, Understanding, Causes

  24 Copy quote

• Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Wisdom, Reality, Ego

  15 Copy quote

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