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.
Mud is the most poetical thing in the world.
A haiku is the expression of a temporary enlightenment, in which we see into the life of things.
If all men lead mechanical, unpoetical lives, this is the real nihilism, the real undoing of the world.
The love of nature is religion, and that religion is poetry; these three things are one thing. This is the unspoken creed of haiku poets.
Regarding R. H. Blyth: Blyth is sometimes perilous, naturally, since he’s a high-handed old poem himself, but he’s also sublime – and who goes to poetry for safety anyway.