While you are continuing this practice, week after week, year after year, your experience will become deeper and deeper, and your experience will cover everything you do in your everyday life. The most important thing is to forget all gain ing ideas, all dualistic ideas. In other words, just practice zazen in a certain posture. Do not think about anything. Just remain on your cushion without expecting anything. Then eventually you will resume your own true nature. That is to say, your own true nature resumes itself.

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few.

Our mind should be free from traces of the past, just like the flowers of spring.

The best way to control cow and sheep is to give them a big grazing field.

In the beginner's mind there is no thought, "I have attained something." All self-centered thoughts limit our vast mind. When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners. Then we can really learn something. The beginner's mind is the mind of compassion. When our mind is compassionate, it is boundless. Dogen-zenji, the founder of our school, always emphasized how important it is to resume our boundless original mind. Then we are always true to ourselves, in sympathy with all beings, and can actually practice.

Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink.

When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything. The best way is to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything.