D. T. Suzuki (quotes)

Zen has no business with ideas.
Eternity is the Absolute present.
To Zen, time and eternity are one.
That’s why I love philosophy: no one wins.
Fundamentally the marksman aims at himself.
The idea of Zen is to catch life as it flows.
We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.
One has not understood until one has forgotten it.
The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious.
I am an artist at living – my work of art is my life.
Art always has something of the unconscious about it.
I am an artist at living – my work of art is my life.
Zen has nothing to do with letters, words, or sutras.
Unless we die to ourselves, we can never be alive again.
Unless we agree to suffer we cannot be free from suffering.
But nothing awakens religious consciousness like suffering.
The waters are in motion, but the moon retains its serenity.
Implicity, there should be something mysterious in every day.
Great works are done when one is not calculating and thinking.
The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow.
When a thing is denied, the very denial involves something not denied.
‘When a thing is denied, the very denial involves something not denied.”
Enlightenment is like everyday consciousness but two inches above the ground.
Zen Makes use, to a great extent, of poetical expressions; Zen is wedded to poetry.
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The intuitive recognition of the instant, thus reality is the highest act of wisdom.
The intuitive recognition of the instant, thus reality… is the highest act of wisdom.
Unless it grows out of yourself no knowledge is really yours, it is only borrowed plumage.
To point at the moon a finger is needed, but woe to those who take the finger for the moon.
However insistently the blind may deny the existence of the sun, they cannot annihilate it.
Birth in the Pure Land is an event that takes place while we are still living in this life.
‘However insistently the blind may deny the existence of the sun, they cannot annihilate it.”
We can see unmistakably that there is an inner relationship between Zen and the warrior’s life.
Meditation is something artificially put on; it does not belong to the native activity of the mind.
Zen teaches nothing; it merely enables us to wake up and become aware. It does not teach, it points.
Zen approaches it from the practical side of life-that is, to work out Enlightenment in life itself.
The truth of Zen is the truth of life, and life means to live, to move, to act, not merely to reflect.
Life, according to Zen, ought to be lived as a bird flies through the air, or as a fish swims in the water.
When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect the mountain exercises vanishes into the air.
‘When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect the mountain exercises vanishes into the air.”
Until we recognize the SELF that exists apart from who we think we are – we cannot know the Ch’an ( ZEN ) MIND.
You ought to know how to rise above the trivialities of life, in which most people are found drowning themselves.
Zen professes itself to be the spirit of Buddhism, but in fact it is the spirit of all religions and philosophies.
The finger pointing at the moon remains a finger and under no circumstances can it be changed into the moon itself.
‘the finger pointing at the moon remains a finger and under no circumstances can it be changed into the moon itself.”
Zen in it’s essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one’s being, and it points the way from bondage to freedom.
The meaning of service is to do the work assigned ungrudgingly and without thought of personal reward material or moral.
Not to be bound by rules, but to be creating one’s own rules-this is the kind of life which Zen is trying to have us live.
Personal experience, therefore, is everything in Zen. No ideas are intelligible to those who have no backing of experience.
Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities.
If there is anything Zen strongly emphasizes it is the attainment of freedom; that is, freedom from all unnatural encumbrances.
To be a good Zen Buddhist it is not enough to follow the teaching of its founder; we have to experience the Buddha’s experience.
Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities.”
Let the intellect alone, it has its usefulness in its proper sphere, but let it not interfere with the flowing of the life-stream.
As soon as you raise a thought and begin to form an idea of it, you ruin the reality itself, because you then attach yourself to form.
Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious.
‘God against man. Man against God. Man against nature. Nature against man. Nature against God. God against nature. Very funny religion!”
We do not realize that as soon as our thoughts cease and all attempts at forming ideas are forgotten the Buddha reveals himself before us.
‘Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious.”
When I say that Zen is life, I mean that Zen is not to be confined within conceptualization, that Zen is what makes conceptualization possible.
Zen has nothing to teach us in the way of intellectual analysis; nor has it any set doctrines which are imposed on its followers for acceptance.
The greatest productions of art, whether painting, music, sculpture or poetry, have invariably this quality-something approaching the work of God.
Facts of experience are valued in Zen more than representations, symbols, and concepts-that is to say, substance is everything in Zen and form nothing.
Modern life seems to recede further and further away from nature, and closely connected with this fact we seem to be losing the feeling of reverence towards nature.
If you have attained something, this is the surest proof that you have gone astray. Therefore, not to have is to have, silence is thunder, ignorance is enlightenment.
How hard, then, and yet how easy it is to understand Zen! Hard because to understand it is not to understand it; easy because not to understand it is to understand it.
‘How hard, then, and yet how easy it is to understand Zen! Hard because to understand it is not to understand it; easy because not to understand it is to understand it.”
We have two eyes to see two sides of things, but there must be a third eye which will see everything at the same time and yet not see anything. That is to understand Zen.
The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one’s humdrum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity.
The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one’s humdrum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity.
The way to ascend unto God is to descend into one’s self; these are Hugo’s words. If thou wisheth to search out the deep things of God, search out the depths of thine own spirit.
The basic idea of Zen is to come in touch with the inner workings of our being, and to do so in the most direct way possible, without resorting to anything external or superadded.
The worst passion we mortals cherish is the desire to possess. Even when we know that our final destination is a hole not more than three feet square, we have the strongest craving
‘The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one’s humdrum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity.”
‘The basic idea of Zen is to come in touch with the inner workings of our being, and to do so in the most direct way possible, without resorting to anything external or superadded.”
When we start to feel anxious or depressed, instead of asking, What do I need to get to be happy? The question becomes, What am I doing to disturb the inner peace that I already have?
When we start to feel anxious or depressed, instead of asking, What do I need to get to be happy? The question becomes, “What am I doing to disturb the inner peace that I already have?
In Zen, there is nothing to explain, nothing to learn, nothing to enrich human knowledge. If knowledge does not arise in man, it is not his own, it is like a borrowed foreign adornment.
‘The way to ascend unto God is to descend into one’s self”; — these are Hugo’s words. “If thou wishest to search out the deep things of God, search out the depths of thine own spirit”;”
The contradiction so puzzling to the ordinary way of thinking comes from the fact that we have to use language to communicate our inner experience, which in its very nature transcends linguistics.
The fighter is to be always single-minded with one object in view: to fight, looking neither backward nor sidewise. To go straight forward in order to crush the enemy is all that is necessary for him.
The mistake consists in our splitting into two what is really and absolutely one. Is not life one as we live it, which we cut to pieces by recklessly applying the murderous knife of intellectual surgery?
If I am asked If I am asked, then, what Zen teaches, I would answer, Zen teaches nothing. Whatever teachings there are in Zen, they come out of one’s own mind. We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.
Dhyana is retaining one’s tranquil state of mind in any circumstance, unfavorable as well as favorable, and not being disturbed or frustrated even when adverse conditions present themselves one after another.
The right art is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede.
Zen perceives and feels, and does not abstract and meditate. Zen penetrates and is finally lost in the immersion. Meditation, on the other hand, is outspokenly dualistic and consequently inevitably superficial.
Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?
‘Zen perceives and feels, and does not abstract and meditate. Zen penetrates and is finally lost in the immersion. Meditation, on the other hand, is outspokenly dualistic and consequently inevitably superficial.”
A simple fishing boat in the midst of the rippling waters is enough to awaken in the mind of the beholder a sense of vastness of the sea and at the same time of peace and contentment – the Zen sense oof the alone.
‘Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?”
Zen professes to be the spirit of Buddhism, but in fact it is the spirit of all religions and philosophies. When Zen is thoroughly understood, absolute peace of mind is attained, and a man lives as he should live.
The claim of the Zen followers that they are transmitting the essence of Buddhism is based on their belief that Zen takes hold of the enlivening spirit of the Buddha, stripped of all its historical and doctrinal garments.
Among the most remarkable features characterizing Zen we find these: spirituality, directness of expression, disregard of form or conventionalism, and frequently an almost wanton delight in going astray from respectability.
Zen is the spirit of a man. Zen believes in his inner purity and goodness. Whatever is superadded or violently torn away, injures the wholesomeness of the spirit. Zen, therefore, is emphatically against all religious conventionalism.
Copying is slavery. The letter must never be followed, only the spirit is to be grasped. Higher affirmations live in the spirit. And where is the spirit? Seek it in your everyday experience, and therein lies abundance of proof for all you need.
Zen opens a man’s eyes to the greatest mystery as it is daily and hourly performed; it enlarges the heart to embrace eternity of time and infinity of space in its every palpitation; it makes us live in the world as if walking in the garden of Eden
No amount of wordy explanations will ever lead us into the nature of our own selves. The more you explain, the more it runs away from you. It’s like trying to get hold of your own shadow. You run after it and it runs with you at the same rate of speed.
‘No amount of wordy explanations will ever lead us into the nature of our own selves. The more you explain, the further it runs away from you. It is like trying to get hold of your own shadow. You run after it and it runs with you at the identical rate of speed.”
Zen, in its essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one’s own being, and it points the way from bondage to freedom. By making us drink right from the fountain of life it liberates us from all the yokes under which we finite beings are usually suffering in this world.
I raise my hand; I take a book from the other side of this desk; I hear the boys playing ball outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the neighboring woods:-in all these I am practicing Zen, I am living Zen. No worldly discussion is necessary, or any explanation.
When traveling is made too easy and comfortable, its spiritual meaning is lost. This may be called sentimentalism, but a certain sense of loneliness engendered by traveling leads one to reflect upon the meaning of life, for life is after all a travelling from one unknown to another unknown.
Suzuki’s works on Zen Buddhism are among the best contributions to the knowledge of living Buddhism… We cannot be sufficiently grateful to the author, first for the fact of his having brought Zen closer to Western understanding, and secondly for the manner in which he has achieved this task.
‘In Zen there must be satori; there must be a general mental upheaval which destroys the old accumulations of intellection and lays down the foundation for a new life; there must be the awakening of a new sense which will review the old things from a hitherto undreamed-of angle of observation.”
Perhaps there is after all nothing mysterious in Zen. Everything is open to your full view. If you eat your food and keep yourself cleanly dressed and work on the farm to raise your rice or vegetables, you are doing all that is required of you on this earth, and the infinite is realized in you.
Emptiness constantly falls within our reach. It is always with us, and conditions all our knowledge, all our deeds and is our life itself. It is only when we attempt to pick it up and hold it forth as something before our eyes that it eludes us, frustrates all our efforts and vanishes like vapor.
Zen wants us to acquire an entirely new point of view whereby to look into the mysteries of life and the secrets of nature. This is because Zen has come to the definite conclusion that the ordinary logical process of reasoning is powerless to give final satisfaction to our deepest spiritual needs.
‘Emptiness constantly falls within our reach. It is always with us, and conditions all our knowledge, all our deeds and is our life itself. It is only when we attempt to pick it up and hold it forth as something before our eyes that it eludes us, frustrates all our efforts and vanishes like vapor.”
Prophecy is rash, but it may be that the publication of D.T. Suzuki’s first Essays in Zen Buddhism in 1927 will seem to future generations as great an intellectual event as William of Moerbeke’s Latin translations of Aristotle in the thirteenth century or Marsiglio Ficino’s of Plato in the fifteenth.
When the identity is realized, I as swordsman see no opponent confronting me and threatening to strike me. I seem to transform myself into the opponent, and every movement he makes as well as every thought he conceives are felt as if they were my own and I intuitively…know when and how to strike him.
The wise Sekiso (Shih-Shuang) said, ‘Stop all your hankerings; let the mildew grow on your lips; make yourself like unto a perfect piece of immaculate silk; let your one thought be eternity; let yourself be like the dead ashes, cold and lifeless; again let yourself be like an old censer in a deserted village shrine!
Because since the beginningless past we are running after objects, not knowing where our Self is, we lose track of the Original Mind and are tormented all the time by the threatening objective world, regarding it as good or bad, true or false, agreeable or disagreeable. We are thus slaves of things and circumstances.
Though perhaps less universally known than such figures as Einstein or Gandhi (who became symbols of our time) Daisetz Suzuki was no less remarkable a man than these. And though his work may not have had such resounding and public effect, he contributed no little to the spiritual and intellectual revolution of our time.
As far as the content goes, there is none in either Satori or Zen that can be described or presented or demonstrated for your intellectual appreciation. For Zen has no business with ideas, and Satori is a kind of inner perception – not the perception, indeed, of a single individual object but the perception of Reality itself, so to speak.
The more you suffer the deeper grows your character, and with the deepening of your character you read the more penetratingly into the secrets of life. All great artists, all great religious leaders, and all great social reformers have come out of the intensest struggles which they fought bravely, quite frequently in tears and with bleeding hearts
The more you suffer the deeper grows your character, and with the deepening of your character you read the more penetratingly into the secrets of life. All great artists, all great religious leaders, and all great social reformers have come out of the intensest struggles which they fought bravely, quite frequently in tears and with bleeding hearts.
The rocks are where they are- and this is their will. The rivers flow- and this is their will. The birds fly- this is their will. Human beings talk- this is their will. The seasons change, heaven sends down rain or snow, the earth occasionally shakes, the waves roll, the stars shine- each of them follows its own will. To be is to will and so is to become.
Zen abhors repetition or imitation of any kind, for it kills. For the same reason Zen never explains, but only affirms. Life is fact and no explanation is necessary or pertinent. To explain is to apologize, and why should we apologize for living? To live—is that not enough? Let us then live, let us affirm! Herein lies Zen in all its purity and in all its nudity as well.
‘The idea of Zen is to catch lie as it flows. There is nothing extraordinary or mysterious about Zen. […]. No wordy discussion is necessary, nor any explanation. I do not know why—and there is no need of explaining, but when the sun rises the whole world dances with joy and everybody’s heart is filled with bliss. If Zen is at all conceivable, it must be taken hold of here.”
The basic idea of Zen is to come in touch with the inner workings of our being, and to do this in the most direct way possible, without resorting to anything external or superadded. Therefore, anything that has the semblance of an external authority is rejected by Zen. Absolute faith is placed in a man’s own inner being. For whatever authority there is in Zen, all comes from within.
‘Taking it all in all, Zen is emphatically a matter of personal experience; if anything can be called radically empirical, it is Zen. No amount of reading, no amount of teaching, no amount of contemplation will ever make one a Zen master. Life itself must be grasped in the midst of its flow; to stop it for examination and analysis is to kill it, leaving its cold corpse to be embraced.”
In the spiritual world there are no time divisions such as the past, present and future; for they have contracted themselves into a single moment of the present where life quivers in its true sense. The past and the future are both rolled up in this present moment of illumination, and this present moment is not something standing still with all its contents, for it ceaselessly moves on.
Zen purposes to discipline the mind itself, to make it its own master, through an insight into its proper nature. This getting into the real nature of one’s own mind or soul is the fundamental object of Zen Buddhism. Zen, therefore, is more than meditation and Dhyana in its ordinary sense. The discipline of Zen consists in opening the mental eye in order to look into the very reason of existence.
If a person opens his mouth to say affirmation or denial, he is lost. Zen is gone. But keeping silence does not go away. The stone on the ground is silent, the blossoming flower under the window is also silent, but they do not understand Zen. There must be some way to find the silence and the speech to be the same, ie. denial and affirmation to be unified in a higher form of utterance. We do that, so we have met Zen.
There is something rejuvenating in the possession of Zen. The spring flowers look prettier, and the mountain stream runs cooler and more transparent. The subjective revolution that brings about this state of things cannot be called abnormal. When life becomes more enjoyable and its expense broadens to include the universe itself, there must be something in ‘satori’ that is quite precious and well worth one’s striving after.
‘There is something rejuvenating in the possession of Zen. The spring flowers look prettier, and the mountain stream runs cooler and more transparent. The subjective revolution that brings about this state of things cannot be called abnormal. When life becomes more enjoyable and its expense broadens to include the universe itself, there must be something in *satori* that is quite precious and well worth one’s striving after.”
This acquisition of a new viewpoint in Zen is called ‘Satori’ (‘Wu’ in Chinese) and its verb form is ‘Satoru’. Without it there is no Zen, for the life of Zen begins with the ‘opening of Satori’; ‘Satori’ may be defined as intuitive looking-in, in contradistinction to intellectual and logical understanding. Whatever the definition, ‘Satori’ means the unfolding of a new world hitherto unperceived in the confusion of the dualistic mind.
When consciousness is not housed in a particular object, we say that it resides where there is no permanent cloister. What does it mean not to be located in a particular site? That is, it does not reside in goodness – evil, existence – non-existence, spirit – matter. This means not to remain in the emptiness or non-emptiness, nor in the rest or the no-one. Where there is no permanent cloister, there is the true cloak of consciousness.
Monks ought to behave like a grinding stone: Changsan comes to sharpen his knife, Li-szŭ comes to grind his axe, everybody and anybody who wants to have his metal improved in anyway comes and makes use of the stone. Each time the stone is rubbed, it wears out, but it makes no complaint, nor does it boast of its usefulness. And those who come to it go home fully benefitted; some of them may not be quite appreciative of the stone; but the stone itself remains ever contented.
Thought creates things by slicing up reality into small bits that it can easily grasp. Thus when you are think-ing you are thing-ing. Thought does not report things, it distorts reality to create things, and as Bergson noted, In so doing it allows what is the very essence of the real to escape. Thus to the extent we actually imagine a world of discrete and separate things, conceptions have become perceptions, and we have in this manner populated our universe with nothing but ghosts.
The idea of Zen is to catch life as it flows. There is nothing extraordinary or mysterious about Zen. I raise my hand ; I take a book from the other side of the desk ; I hear the boys playing ball outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the neighbouring wood: — in all these I am practising Zen, I am living Zen. No wordy discussions is necessary, nor any explanation. I do not know why — and there is no need of explaining, but when the sun rises the whole world dances with joy and everybody’s heart is filled with bliss. If Zen is at all conceivable, it must be taken hold of here.
If there is anything Zen strongly emphasizes it is the attainment of freedom; that is, freedom from all unnatural encumbrances. Meditation is something artificially put on; it does not belong to the native activity of the mind. Upon what do the fowls of the air meditate? Upon what do the fish in the water meditate? They fly; they swim. Is not that enough? Who wants to fix his mind on the unity of God and man, or on the nothingness of life? Who wants to be arrested in the daily manifestations of his life-activity by such meditations as the goodness of a divine being or the everlasting fire of hell?
Modern life seems to recede further and further away from nature, and closely connected with this fact we seem to be losing the feeling of reverence towards nature. It is probably inevitable when science and machinery, capitalism and materialism go hand in hand so far in a most remarkably successful manner. Mysticism, which is the life of religion in whatever sense we understand it, has come to be relegated altogether in the background. Without a certain amount of mysticism there is no appreciation for the feeling of reverence, and, along with it, for the spiritual significance of humility. Science and scientific technique have done a great deal for humanity; but as far as our spiritual welfare is concerned we have not made any advances over that attained by our forefathers. In fact we are suffering at present the worst kind of unrest all over the world.

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About D. T. Suzuki

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D. T. Suzuki (quotes)

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About D. T. Suzuki

Quotes by D. T. Suzuki

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