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 take pride in your attainment or become discouraged because of your idealistic effort, your practice will confine you by a thick wall.

It is easy to have calmness in inactivity, it is hard to have calmness in activity, but calmness in activity is true calmness.

Don't move. Just die over and over. Don't anticipate. Nothing can save you now because you have only this moment. Not even enlightenment will help you now because there are no other moments. With no future, be true to yourself and express yourself fully. Don't move.

We try, and we try, and we fail; and then we go deeper.

For Zen students a weed is a treasure. With this attitude, whatever you do, life becomes an art.

If enlightenment comes first, before thinking, before practice, your thinking and your practice will not be self-centered. By enlightenment I mean believing in nothing, believing in something which has no form or no color, which is ready to take form or color. This enlightenment is the immutable truth. It is on this orginal truth that our activity, our thinking, and our practice should be based.