Yamada Koun Quotes

The purpose of Zen is the perfection of character.

In the same way your life is the continuity of standing up, sitting down, laughing, sleeping, waking up, drinking, eating, and, of course, being born and dying. That is the continuity of the whole universe.

The entrance into Zen is the grasping of one's essential nature. It is absolutely impossible, however, to come to a clear understanding of our essential nature by any intellectual or philosophical method. It is accomplished only by the experience of self-realization through zazen.

Someone who wants to attain enlightenment must be brave. He must rush into the crowd of enemies with a dagger. In the practice of Zen, enemies are our delusive thoughts and passions.

The practice of Zen is forgetting the self in the act of uniting with something.

Every moment is the manifestation of the whole. Life itself is, therefore, nothing but the continuous moment of the whole, and everybody is living the continuous moment of the whole.