Taking a biopsy often aggravates and stimulates growth – and does not indicate how many secondary tumors have developed.
Thus we see that the all important thing is not killing or giving life, drinking or not drinking, living in the town or the country, being unlucky or lucky, winning or losing. It is how we win, how we lose, how we live or die, finally, how we choose...
Think of Zen, of the Void, of Good and Evil and you are bound hand and foot. Think only and entirely and completely of what you are doing at the moment and you are free as a bird.
What is Zen? Zen is looking at things with the eye of God, that is, becoming the thing’s eyes so that it looks at itself with our eyes.
The object of our lives is to look at, listen to, touch, taste things. Without them, – these sticks, stones, feathers, shells, – there is no Deity.
There is nothing intrinsically more beautiful or poetical about the moon than about a dunghill; if anything, the contrary, for the latter is full of life and warmth and energy.
A thief running away like mad from a ferocious watch-dog may be a splendid example of Zen.
Things have done their part; it is for us to do ours...
What is essential is not the answer but the questions; the answers indeed are the death of the life that is in the questions.
Zen is mind-less activity, that is, Mind-ful activity, and it may often be advisable to emphasize the mind, and say, Take care of the thoughts and the actions will take care of themselves.
Zen is the game of insight, the game of discovering who you are beneath the social masks.
Perfect does not mean perfect actions in a perfect world, bur appropriate actions in an imperfect one.
We that change, hate change. And we that pass, love what abides. Ashes, darkness, dust.
Zen is poetry; poetry is Zen.
The importance and unimportance of the self cannot be exaggerated.
Zen is the unsymbolization of the world.
Nothing divides one so much as thought.
There is no greater difference between men than between grateful and ungrateful people.
I myself think that to have a cat is more important than to have a Bible.
These are some of the characteristics of the state of mind which the creation and appreciation of haiku demand: Selflessness, Loneliness, Grateful Acceptance, Wordlessness, Non-intellectuality, Contradictoriness, Humor, Freedom, Non-morality, Simplicity, Materiality, Love, and Courage.