Shunryu Suzuki
Shunryu Suzuki
Shunryu Suzukiwas a Sōtō Zen monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States, and is renowned for founding the first Buddhist monastery outside Asia. Suzuki founded San Francisco Zen Center, which along with its affiliate temples, comprises one of the most influential Zen organizations in the United States. A book of his teachings, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, is one of the most popular books on Zen and Buddhism in the West...
NationalityJapanese
ProfessionLeader
Date of Birth18 May 1904
CountryJapan
Even if the sun were to rise from the west, the Bodhisattva has only one way.
You must be true to your own way until at last you actually come to the point where you see it is necessary to forget all about yourself.
You want to eliminate your evil desires in order to reveal your Buddha nature, but where will you throw them away?
If you take pride in your attainment or become discouraged because of your idealistic effort, your practice will confine you by a thick wall.
To stop your mind does not mean to stop the activities of mind. It means your mind pervades your whole body.
There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love...Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self-love bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.
The practice of Zen mind is beginner's mind. The innocence of the first inquiry—what am I?—is needed throughout Zen practice. The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities. It is the kind of mind which can see things as they are, which step by step and in a flash can realize the original nature of everything.
Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself.
Instead of respecting things, we want to use them for ourselves and if it is difficult to use them, we want to conquer them.
Those who sit perfectly physically usually take more time to obtain the true way of Zen.
Someone was sitting in front of a sunflower, watching the sunflower, a cup of sun, and so I tried it too. It was wonderful; I felt the whole universe in the sunflower. That was my experience. Sunflower meditation. A wonderful confidence appeared. You can see the whole universe in a flower.
So when you try hard to make your own way, you will help others...before you make your own way you cannot help anyone, and no one can help you.
So the secret is just to say 'Yes!' and jump off from here. Then there is no problem. It means to be yourself, always yourself, without sticking to an old self.
And we should forget, day by day, what we have done; this is true non-attachment. And we should do something new. To do something new, of course we must know our past, and this is alright. But we should not keep holding onto anything we have done; we should only reflect on it. And we must have some idea of what we should do in the future. But the future is the future, the past is the past; now we should work on something new.