The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede. What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will. You think that what you do not do yourself does not happen.

The right shot at the right moment does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You do not wait for fulfilment, but brace yourself for failure.

You must act as if the goal were infinitely far off.

The man, the art, the work--it is all one.

Zen Buddhism does not preach. Sermons remain words. It waits until people feel stifled and insecure, driven by a secret longing.

He grows daily more capable of following any inspiration without technical effort, and also of letting inspiration come to him through meticulous observation.

The hand that guides the brush has already caught and executed what floated before the mind at the same moment the mind began to form it, and in the end the pupil no longer knows which of the two-mind or hand -was responsible for the work.