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.

As soon as you see something, you already start to intellectualize it. As soon as you intellectualize something, it is no longer what you saw.

If you understand real practice, then archery or other activities can be zen. If you don't understand how to practice archery in its true sense, then even though you practice very hard, what you acquire is just technique. It won't help you through and through. Perhaps you can hit the mark without trying, but without a bow and arrow you cannot do anything. If you understand the point of practice, then even without a bow and arrow the archery will help you. How you get that kind of power or ability is only through right practice.

A garden is never finished.

To renounce things is not to give them up. It is to acknowledge that all things go away.

When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.

Each one of us must make his own true way, and when we do, that way will express the universal way.