D.T. Suzuki

The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one’s humdrum life into one of art.

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

Zen has no business with ideas.

Zen has no business with ideas.

If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?

Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ has been crucifying in a quiet way ever since.

What about Jesus Christ? I say that he was a precursor of idealists; a precursor of socialists.

What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.

Buddhist practice is simply a system directed to the one end of lessening the suffering of life.

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first — rock and roll or Christianity.

Meditation is the ultimate mobile device; you can use it anywhere, anytime, unobtrusively.

Which is it, is man one of God’s blunders or is God one of man’s?

You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You’ve got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It’s all down to you, mate.

I pray Thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within.

Abandon yesterday, tomorrow and today. Cross over to the farthest shore beyond life and death.

When the student is ready the teacher will appear.

Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.