To point at the moon a finger is needed, but woe to those who take the finger for the moon...
You ought to know how to rise above the trivialities of life, in which most people are found drowning themselves.
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.
The waters are in motion, but the moon retains its serenity.
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?
The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow.
Personal experience, therefore, is everything in Zen. No ideas are intelligible to those who have no backing of experience.
Life, according to Zen, ought to be lived as a bird flies through the air, or as a fish swims in the water.
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.
The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious.
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 Makes use, to a great extent, of poetical expressions; Zen is wedded to poetry.
Zen teaches nothing; it merely enables us to wake up and become aware. It does not teach, it points.
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.
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.
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.
Zen approaches it from the practical side of life-that is, to work out Enlightenment in life itself.
The intuitive recognition of the instant, thus reality is the highest act of wisdom.
The greatest productions of art, whether painting, music, sculpture or poetry, have invariably this quality-something approaching the work of God.
Eternity is the Absolute present.