When we become truly ourselves, we just become a swinging door, and we are purely independent of, and at the same time, dependent upon everything.

When you do not realize that you are one with the river, or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact, we have no fear of death anymore.

Hell is not punishment, it's training.

You want to eliminate your evil desires in order to reveal your Buddha nature, but where will you throw them away?

Because all existence is founded upon the ever-present state of union, everything already exists in a state of tranquility. However, this state of tranquility is masked from us by our assumption that there is a separation, that there is a problem.

Our way is to practice one step at a time, one breath at a time, with no gaining idea.

The secret of Soto Zen is just two words: not always so.... In Japanese, it's two words, three words in English. That is the secret of our practice.