We emphasize straightforwardness. You should be true to your feelings, and to your mind, expressing yourself without any reservations. This helps the listener to understand more easily.
When we say something, our subjective intention or situation is always involved. So there is no perfect word; some distortion is always present in a statement.
But as long as you have some fixed idea or are caught by some habitual way of doing things, you cannot appreciate things in their true sense.
There is no particular way in true practice. You should find your own way, and you should know what kind of practice you have right now.
Even when you practice zazen alone, without a teacher, I think you will find some way to tell whether your practice is adequate or not.
A student, filled with emotion and crying, implored, "Why is there so much suffering?" Suzuki Roshi replied, "No reason.
While you are continuing this practice, week after week, year after year, your experience will become deeper and deeper, and your experience will cover everything you do in your everyday life.
But if you make your best effort just to continue your practice with your whole mind and body, without gaining ideas, then whatever you do will be true practice.
So even though you have some difficulty in your practice, even though you have some waves while you are sitting, those waves themselves will help you.
The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.
The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.
Actually we do not have any particular name for our practice; when we practice zazen we just practice it, and whether we find joy in our practice or not, we just do it.
In zazen practice we say your mind should be concentrated on your breathing, but the way to keep your mind on your breathing is to forget all about yourself and just to sit and feel your breathing.
You see something or hear a sound, and there you have everything just as it is. [...] Whatever you do, it should be an expression of the same deep activity. We should appreciate what we are doing. There is no preparation for something else.
Hope's interesting, isn't it? I can't turn hope off, it's hopeless.
Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
Concentration is not to try hard to watch something... Concentration means freedom... In zazen practice we say your mind should be concentrated on your breathing, but the way to keep your mind on your breathing is to forget all about yourself and jus...
In Hinayana Buddhism, practice is classified in four ways. The best way is just to do it without having any joy in it, not even spiritual joy. This way is just to do it, forgetting your physical and mental feeling, forgetting all about yourself in yo...
In other restless positions you have no power to accept your difficulties, but in the zazen posture which you have acquired by long, hard practice, your mind and body have great power to accept things as they are, whether they are agreeable or disagr...
The art of teaching lies in communicating the mystery of the universe without taking the mystery out of it.
That which triggers understanding often is found by bringing misunderstanding to the light.
