Life without zazen is like winding your clock without setting it. It runs perfectly well, but it dosen't tell time.

We die, and we do not die.

The purpose of studying Buddhism is not to study Buddhism, but to study ourselves. That is why we have teaching. But the teaching is not ourselves. It is some explanation of ourselves. To study the teaching is to know yourselves. That is why we do not ever attach to the teaching, or to the teacher. The moment you meet a teacher you should leave the teacher, and you should be independent. You want a teacher so that you can be independent. So you study yourselves. You have the teacher for yourselves, not for the teacher.

A student, filled with emotion and crying, implored, "Why is there so much suffering?" Suzuki Roshi replied, "No reason.

So when you try hard to make your own way, you will help others...before you make your own way you cannot help anyone, and no one can help you.

You must be true to your own way until at last you actually come to the point where you see it is necessary to forget all about yourself.

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