D. T. Suzuki Quotes

35 Sourced Quotes

The mistake consists in our splitting into two what is really and absolutely one. Is not life one as we live it, which we cut to pieces by recklessly applying the murderous knife of intellectual surgery?

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

D. T. Suzuki
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.

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

D. T. Suzuki
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.

D. T. Suzuki
I raise my hand; I take a book from the other side of this desk; I hear the boys playing ball outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the neighboring woods:-in all these I am practicing Zen, I am living Zen. No worldly discussion is necessary, or any explanation.

D. T. Suzuki
Because since the beginningless past we are running after objects, not knowing where our Self is, we lose track of the Original Mind and are tormented all the time by the threatening objective world, regarding it as good or bad, true or false, agreeable or disagreeable. We are thus slaves of things and circumstances.

D. T. Suzuki
Zen is the spirit of a man. Zen believes in his inner purity and goodness. Whatever is superadded or violently torn away, injures the wholesomeness of the spirit. Zen, therefore, is emphatically against all religious conventionalism.

D. T. Suzuki
Zen wants us to acquire an entirely new point of view whereby to look into the mysteries of life and the secrets of nature. This is because Zen has come to the definite conclusion that the ordinary logical process of reasoning is powerless to give final satisfaction to our deepest spiritual needs.

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

D. T. Suzuki
Suzuki's works on Zen Buddhism are among the best contributions to the knowledge of living Buddhism... We cannot be sufficiently grateful to the author, first for the fact of his having brought Zen closer to Western understanding, and secondly for the manner in which he has achieved this task.

D. T. Suzuki
The worst passion we mortals cherish is the desire to possess. Even when we know that our final destination is a hole not more than three feet square, we have the strongest craving

D. T. Suzuki
The more you suffer the deeper grows your character, and with the deepening of your character you read the more penetratingly into the secrets of life. All great artists, all great religious leaders, and all great social reformers have come out of the intensest struggles which they fought bravely, quite frequently in tears and with bleeding hearts

D. T. Suzuki
The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow.

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

D. T. Suzuki
Facts of experience are valued in Zen more than representations, symbols, and concepts-that is to say, substance is everything in Zen and form nothing.

D. T. Suzuki
Copying is slavery. The letter must never be followed, only the spirit is to be grasped. Higher affirmations live in the spirit. And where is the spirit? Seek it in your everyday experience, and therein lies abundance of proof for all you need.

D. T. Suzuki
Personal experience, therefore, is everything in Zen. No ideas are intelligible to those who have no backing of experience.

D. T. Suzuki
The discipline of Zen consists in opening the mental eye in order to look into the very reason of existence.

D. T. Suzuki
The basic idea of Zen is to come in touch with the inner workings of our being, and to do this in the most direct way possible, without resorting to anything external or superadded. Therefore, anything that has the semblance of an external authority is rejected by Zen. Absolute faith is placed in a man's own inner being. For whatever authority there is in Zen, all comes from within.

D. T. Suzuki
There are in Zen no sacred books or dogmatic tenets, nor are there any symbolic formulae through which an access might be gained into the signification of Zen. If I am asked, then, what Zen teaches, I would answer, Zen teaches nothing. Whatever teachings there are in Zen, they come out of one's own mind. We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.

D. T. Suzuki
The contradiction so puzzling to the ordinary way of thinking comes from the fact that we have to use language to communicate our inner experience, which in its very nature transcends linguistics.

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

D. T. Suzuki
Zen takes hold of the enlivening spirit of the Buddha, stripped of all its historical and doctrinal garments.

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

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

D. T. Suzuki
Life, according to Zen, ought to be lived as a bird flies through the air, or as a fish swims in the water.

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

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

D. T. Suzuki
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.

D. T. Suzuki