The body moves naturally, automatically, without any personal intervention or awareness. If we think too much, our actions become slow and hesitant.

You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair.

Train the body and develop stamina and endurance. But the spirit of competition and power that presides over them is not good, it reflects a distorted vision of life. The root of the martial arts is not there.

What is called zazen is sitting on a zafu [pillow] in a quiet room, absolutely still, in the exact and proper position and without uttering a word, the mind empty of any thought, good or wicked. It is continuing to sit peacefully, facing a wall, and nothing more. Every day.

If we achieve satori and the satori shows, like a bit of dogshit stuck to the top of our nose, that is not so good.

Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance.

The silence of the mountain is even more beautiful once the birds are quiet.