D.T. Suzuki quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by D.T. Suzuki

D.T. Suzuki Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from D.T. Suzuki on Wise Famous Quotes.

Unless it grows out of yourself no knowledge is really yours, it is only borrowed plumage.

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.

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.

However insistently the blind may deny the existence of the sun, they cannot annihilate it.

Implicity, there should be something mysterious in every day.

The meaning of service is to do the work assigned ungrudgingly and without thought of personal reward material or moral.

Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities.

Zen professes
itself to be the spirit of Buddhism, but in fact it is the spirit of all
religions and philosophies,

The waters are in motion, but the moon retains its serenity.

We can see unmistakeably that there is an inner relationship between Zen and the warrior's life.

That's why I love philosophy: no one wins.

To point at the moon a finger is needed, but woe to those who take the finger for the moon ...

The greatest productions of art, whether painting, music, sculpture or poetry, have invariably this quality-something approaching the work of God.

When a thing is denied, the very denial involves something not denied.

Zen has nothing to do with letters, words, or sutras.

Fundamentally the marksman aims at himself.

To Zen, time and eternity are one.

The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious.

God against man. Man against God. Man against nature. Nature against man. Nature against God. God against nature. Very funny religion!

Zen teaches nothing; it merely enables us to wake up and become aware. It does not teach, it points.

Until we recognize the SELF that exists apart from who we think we are - we cannot know the Ch'an ( ZEN ) MIND

Zen has no business with ideas.

To live - is that not enough?

Let the intellect alone, it has its usefulness in its proper sphere, but let it not interfere with the flowing of the life-stream.

Enlightenment is like everyday consciousness but two inches above the ground.

The intuitive recognition of the instant, thus reality ... is the highest act of wisdom

When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect the mountain exercises vanishes into the air.

Great works are done when one is not calculating and thinking.

Zen approaches it from the practical side of life-that is, to work out Enlightenment in life itself.

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.

deepest spiritual experience.

Eternity is the Absolute present.

Unless we agree to suffer we cannot be free from suffering.

Zen Makes use, to a great extent, of poetical expressions; Zen is wedded to poetry.

I am an artist at living - my work of art is my life.

The truth of Zen is the truth of life, and life means to live, to move, to act, not merely to reflect.

One has not understood until one has forgotten it.

You ought to know how to rise above the trivialities of life, in which most people are found drowning themselves.

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.

Art always has something of the unconscious about it.

Unless we die to ourselves, we can never be alive again.

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 ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow.

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.

We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.

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.

The finger pointing at the moon remains a finger and under no circumstances can it be changed into the moon itself.