If you want to study Zen, you should forget all your previous ideas and just practice zazen and see what kind of experience you have in your practice. That is naturalness.

Nothing outside yourself can cause any trouble. You yourself make the waves in your mind. If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm. This mind is called big mind.

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as an enlightened person. There is only enlightened activity.

It is not after we understand the truth that we attain enlightenment. To realize the truth is to live - to exist here and now.

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.

In the zazen posture, your mind and body have, great power to accept things as they are, whether agreeable or disagreeable.

The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the experts, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all possibilities.