Shunryu Suzuki
Japanese Sōtō Zen monk who, more than any other figure, established Zen Buddhism on the West Coast of America and produced — through the transcripts of his San Francisco Zen Center talks — what remains the single most-read Zen book in English. Born in 1904 in Hiratsuka, Japan, the son of a Sōtō priest, he came to America in 1959 to serve a small Japanese-American congregation in San Francisco and quickly drew Western students who would form the founding generation of American Zen. From their dawn sittings he gave the talks collected in 1970 as Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind — one of the most influential Buddhist texts of the twentieth century. He died of cancer in 1971, leaving the San Francisco Zen Center, Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, and Green Gulch Farm as his living legacy.
quotes in library
Quotes by Shunryu Suzuki
109 quotes“In the third grade, your teacher told you what to do. In zen, you tell yourself.”
“To live is to be a beginner all over again.”
“In every moment, you are at the beginning.”
“Even very advanced students are beginners.”
“The way you walk is the way you sit. The way you sit is the way you live.”
“Each thing is dharma. Even the dirty thing.”
“In the dust on the floor, there is enlightenment.”
“Don't say it is impossible. Don't say it is too difficult.”
“Just sit and find out for yourself.”
“Many possibilities are within the most ordinary moment.”
“Look at the wall. The wall is your teacher.”
“In zazen, the mind is in the body. The body is in the world.”
“To be a Buddha means to walk through this world without attachment.”
“In the deepest practice, there is no practice.”
“There is no path to walk. The walking is the path.”
“Everything is changing. Don't try to hold.”
“To grasp at the moment is to lose the moment.”
“Let the moment go. Let the next moment arrive.”
“In the bow, the ego is set down.”
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