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“Each of you is perfect the way you are. And you can use a little improvement.”
“When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners.”
“Then we can really learn something.”
“Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.”
“Wherever you are, you are one with the clouds and one with the sun and the stars you see.”
“You are everything.”
“Strictly speaking, there are no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity.”
“To live in the realm of Buddha nature means to die as a small being, moment after moment.”
“What we call I is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale.”
“Zen practice is to open up our small mind. So concentrating is just an aid to help you realize big mind.”
“Big mind is something you have, not something to seek for.”
“To be a Buddha is to walk in your own way.”
“As long as you have some definite idea about or some hope in the future, you cannot really be serious with the moment that exists right now.”
“Just to be alive is enough.”
“To stop the mind does not mean to stop the activities of the mind.”
“It means your mind pervades your whole body.”
“With your full mind you form the mudra in your hands.”
“With your whole mind you sit with painful legs without being disturbed.”
“The most important thing is to find out what is the most important thing.”
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