Dogen Zenji

To study Buddhism is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be awakened by all things.

To study Buddhism is to study ourselves. To study ourselves is to forget ourselves.

I come to realize that mind is no other than mountains and rivers and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and stars.

[on enlightenment] Body and mind dropped off.

The valley stream’s rushing sound is the eloquent tongue of Buddha. The mountain’s vibrant colours are nothing but the Buddha’s form.

The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong.

You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.

God, grant us our desires, and grant them quickly.

Zen mind is not Zen mind. Throwing away Zen mind is correct Zen mind.

I’ve been up the mountain and I had a choice. Should I come down? So I came down. God said, Okay, you’ve been up on the mountain, now you go down. You’re on your own, free. Check in later, but now you’re on your own.

It is the final proof of God’s omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.

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

No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.

Learning Zen is a phenomenon of gold & dung. Before you learn it, it’s like gold; after you learn it, it’s like dung.

The concept known as bal tashchit – ‘Do no destroy’ – has a special significance in Jewish tradition…We are constantly being warned in our faith that the capricious, thoughtless, wasteful destruction of the elements and creatures of the earth is wrong…We should remind ourselves daily of our responsibility to all aspects of creation.

Children, Fear God; that is to say, have an holy awe upon your minds to avoid that which is evil, and a strict care to embrace and do that which is good.

Buddha means awareness, the awareness of body and mind that prevents evil from arising in either.

Zazen is an activity that is an extension of the universe. Zazen is not the life of an individual, it’s the universe that’s breathing.

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would solve most the worlds problems.

Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.