Shunryu Suzuki - Activity Quotes

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If enlightenment comes first, before thinking, before practice, your thinking and your practice will not be self-centered. By enlightenment I mean believing in nothing, believing in something which has no form or no color, which is ready to take form or color. This enlightenment is the immutable truth. It is on this orginal truth that our activity, our thinking, and our practice should be based.

Shunryu Suzuki
The purpose of studying Buddhism is not to study Buddhism but to study ourselves. You are not your body. You are the Big Activity. You are just expressing the smallest particle of the Big Activity. That is all. But when you become attached to a temporal expression of the Big Activity, it is time to talk about Buddhism.

Shunryu Suzuki
The mind we have when we practice zazen is the great mind: we don't try to see anything; we stop conceptual thinking; we stop emotional activity; we just sit. Whatever happens to us, we are not bothered. We just sit. It is like something happening in the great sky. Whatever kind of bird flies through it, the sky doesn't care. That is the mind transmitted from Buddha to us.

Shunryu Suzuki
It is easy to have calmness in inactivity, it is hard to have calmness in activity, but calmness in activity is true calmness.

Shunryu Suzuki
There are, strictly speaking, no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity.

Shunryu Suzuki
Zazen practice and everyday activity are one thing. We call zazen everyday life, and everyday life zazen.

Shunryu Suzuki
To cook is not just to prepare food for someone or to cook for yourself; it is to express your sincerity. So when you cook you should express yourself in your activity in the kitchen. You should allow yourself plenty of time.

Shunryu Suzuki