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

If you can just appreciate each thing, one by one, then you will have pure gratitude. Even though you observe just one flower, that one flower includes everything

Meditation opens the mind to the greatest mystery that takes place daily and hourly; it widens the heart so that it may feel the eternity of time and infinity of space in every throb; it gives us a life within the world as if we were moving about in paradise.

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.

When you are fooled by something else, the damage will not be so big. But when you are fooled by yourself, it is fatal. No more medicine.

Time goes from present to past.

If you were not born in this world, there would be no need to die. To be born in this world is to die, to disappear [laughing].