That's been one of my mantras - focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without.

Preparing food is not just about yourself and others. It is about everything!

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few.

Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer.

All of you are perfect just as you are and you could use a little improvement.

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.

When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.

The most important thing is to find out what is the most important thing.

If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything.

I think you’re all enlightened, until you open your mouths.

The world is its own magic.

Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.

As long as you seek for something, you will get the shadow of reality and not reality itself.

Never test the depth of the water with both feet.

Any person capable of angering you becomes your master;
he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.

If you would be a reader, read; if a writer, write.

There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon.

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.

The moon is brighter since the barn burned.

It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.

All that's visible springs from causes intimate to you. While walking, sitting, lying down, the body itself is complete truth. If someone asks the inner meaning of this: "Inside the treasury of dharma eye a single grain of dust."

To what shall I liken the world? Moonlight, reflected in dewdrops. Shaken from a crane's bill.

Those who see worldly life as an obstacle to Dharma see no Dharma in everyday actions. They have not yet discovered that there are no everyday actions outside of Dharma.

I come to realize that mind is no other than mountains and rivers and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and stars.

In autumn even though I may see it again, how can I sleep with the moon this evening?

Yes, when you see for the first time, a great laughter arises in you - the laughter about the whole ridiculousness of your misery, the laughter about the whole foolishness of your problems, the laughter about the whole absurdity of your suffering.

Meaning is man-created. And because you constantly look for meaning, you start to feel meaninglessness.

This is the Zen approach: nothing is there to be done. There is nothing to do. One has just to be. Have a rest and be ordinary and be natural.

Zen is a kind of unlearning. It teaches you how to drop that which you have learned, how to become unskillful again, how to become a child again, how to start existing without mind again, how to be here without any mind.

Zen is all-inclusive. It never denies, it never says no to anything; it accepts everything and transforms it into a higher reality.

Zen people love Buddha so tremendously that they can even play jokes upon him. It is out of great love; they are not afraid.

Zen is a totally different kind of religion. It brings humanness to religion. It is not bothered about anything superhuman; its whole concern is how to make ordinary life a blessing.

You become that which you think you are. Or, it is not that you become it, but that the idea gets very deeply rooted - and that's what all conditioning is.

You and your brain are two things. The brain is your machinery just like everything else is your machinery. This hand is my mechanism; I use it. My brain is my mechanism; I use it.

The disciple is not hankering for knowledge; he wants to see, not to know. He wants to be. He is no longer interested in having more knowledge; he wants to have more being.

Zen has no theory. It is a non-theoretical approach into reality. It has no doctrine and no dogma - hence it has no church, no priest, no pope.

The modern mind has lost all capacity to wonder. It has lost all capacity to look into the mysterious, into the miraculous - because of knowledge, because it thinks it knows.

The feminine is more powerful than the masculine, the soft is more powerful than the hard, the water is more powerful than the rock.

The moment you enter into the world of words you start falling away from that which is. The more you enter into language, the farther you are away from existence.

Zen is non-serious. Zen has a tremendous sense of humor. No other religion has evolved so much that it can have that sense of humor.

Don't seek, don't search, don't ask, don't knock, don't demand - relax. If you relax, it comes. If you relax, it is there. If you relax, you start vibrating with it.

All that is great cannot be possessed - and that is one of the most foolish things man goes on doing. We want to possess.

A Zen master used to say, "It is clear and so it is hard to see. A dunce once searched for a fire with a lighted lantern. Had he known what fire was, he could have cooked his rice much sooner."

Zen is not morality, it is aesthetics. It does not impose a code of morality. it does not give you any commandments: "do this, don't do that."

God is a synergetic experience. Science can never reveal it, philosophy can never come to it - only a poetic approach, a very passive, very loving approach, can.

Zen is not a philosophy, it is poetry. It does not propose, it simply persuades. It does not argue, it simply sings its own song.

Zen says: be empty. Look without any idea. Look into the nature of things but with no idea, with no prejudice, with no presupposition.

Zen says everything is divine so how can anything be special? All is special. Nothing is non-special so nothing can be special.

For Zen, man is the goal; man is the end unto himself. God is not something above humanity, God is something hidden within humanity. Man is carrying God in himself as a potentiality.