Dogen Zenji

You should study not only that you become a mother when your child is born, but also that you become a child.

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

In a mind clear as still water, even the waves, breaking, are reflecting its light.

[on enlightenment] Body and mind dropped off.

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

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

What you possess, you lose.

Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.

If there is any moral in Christianity, if there is anything to be learned from it, if the whole story is not profitless from first to last, it comes to this: that a man should back his own opinion against the world s.

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.

Cultivating a close, warmhearted feeling for others is the ultimate source of success in life.

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.

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.

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

What was never lost can never be found.

When an ordinary man attains knowledge, he is a sage; when a sage attains understanding, he is an ordinary man.

You’ve got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body’s sermon on how to behave.

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

Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace.

To understand everything is to forgive everything.

You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.