Take care of things, and they will take care of you.
Preparing food is not just about yourself and others. It is about everything!
When my master and I were walking in the rain, he would say, ‘Do not walk so fast, the rain is everywhere.’
If you want to enjoy the movie, you should know that it is the combination of film and light and white screen, and that the most important thing is to have a plain, white screen.
No teaching could be more direct than just to sit down.
It is only by practicing through a continual succession of agreeable and disagreeable situations that we acquire true strengths. To accept that pain is inherent and to live our lives from this understanding is to create the causes and conditions for happiness.
To cook is not just to prepare food for someone or to cook for yourself; it is to express your sincerity. So when you cook you should express yourself in your activity in the kitchen. You should allow yourself plenty of time.
Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there in the imperfection is perfect reality.
Usually when someone believes in a particular religion, his attitude becomes more and more a sharp angle pointing away from himself. In our way the point of the angle is always toward ourselves.
The way that helps will not be the same; it changes according to the situation.
If you think you will get something from practicing zazen, already you are involved in impure practice.
Our way is to practice one step at a time, one breath at a time, with no gaining idea.
You will always exist in the universe in one form or another.
Zen is not some fancy, special art of living. Our teaching is just to live, always in reality, in its exact sense. To make our effort, moment after moment, is our way.
When we become truly ourselves, we just become a swinging door, and we are purely independent of, and at the same time, dependent upon everything.
You can’t make a date with enlightenment.
The goal of our life’s effort is to reach the other shore, Nirvana. Prajna paramita, the true wisdom of life, is that in each step of the way, the other shore is actually reached.
Our mind should be free from traces of the past, just like the flowers of spring.
We have to study with our warm heart, not just with our brain.
So it is not a matter of whether it is possible to attain Buddhahood, or if it is possible to make a tile a jewel. But just to work, just to live in this world with this understanding is the most important point, and that is our practice. That is true zazen.