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Quote by Shunryu Suzuki

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Zen Mind, Beginners Mind

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Shunryu Suzuki
Shunryu Suzuki

Shunryu Suzuki, born on May 18, 1904, was a renowned Zen master from Japan. He played a significant role in spreading Zen culture in the Western world. more

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“The best way to do this is by putting these teachings into practice in our daily lives. Experience always goes beyond ideas. Tenth-century Vietnamese master Thiên Hôi told his students, “Be diligent in order to attain the state of no birth and no death.” One student asked, “Where can we touch the world of no birth and no death?” and he responded, “Right here in the world of birth and death.” To touch the water, you have to touch the waves. If you touch birth and death deeply, you touch the world of no birth and no death.”

ZenLife And DeathVietnamZen Buddhism
Book:The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching : Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy and Liberation
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“In Zen Buddhist texts they say, “You cannot nail a peg into the sky.” And so, to be a man of the sky, a man of the void, is also called ‘a man not depending on anything’. And when you’re not hung on anything you are the only thing that isn’t hung on anything – which is the universe. Which doesn’t hang, you see. Where would it hang? It has no place to fall on, even though it may be dropping; there will never be the crash of it landing on a concrete floor somewhere. But the reason for that is that it won’t crash below because it doesn’t hang above. And so there is a poem, in Chinese, which speaks of such a person as having above, not a tile to cover the head; below, not an inch of ground on which to stand.”

GodSpiritualityUniverseBuddhismZenVoidImpermanenceClingingAlan Watts
Book:Out of Your Mind
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“It is precisely this [transcendental] privilege that Christian missionaries in China and Japan failed to relinquish when they spoke about Buddhism; but the same failure is found in such "na(t)ive" exponents of Zen as D. T. Suzuki, and it would perhaps be hard to decide which version of Zen, the negative or the idealized, is most misleading. Even if the degree of reductionism is not quite the same in both cases, both interpretations share responsibility for the strange predicament in which Westerners who approach Chan/Zen find themselves: they are unable to consider it a serious intellectual system, for the constraints of Western discourse on Zen cause them to either devaluate it as an Eastern form of either "natural mysticism" or "quietism" or to idealize it as a wonderfully exotic Dharma. In this sense, Zen can be seen as a typical example of "secondary Orientalism," a stereotype concocted as much by the Japanese themselves as by Westerners.”

ZenChan
Book:Chan Insights and Oversights
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“The first encounter with Chan/Zen took place in Japan, where Francis Xavier arrived in August 1549. Xavier's stay in Japan was relatively short, and he had to rely in the beginning on the poor information provided by the Japanese convert Yajirō, who spoke some Portuguese. In contrast to Ricci's, Xavier's judgment reflects the sociopolitical importance of Buddhism in Japanese society prior to the anti-Buddhist repression of 1571, as well as the strong impressions left by his first encounters with Zen masters. Although Xavier and his confreres were puzzled by the many similarities between Buddhism and Christianity and first interpreted them as proof of a past knowledge, obscured in time, of Christian teachings, they eventually attributed them to the work of the devil (Schurhammer 1982, 224).”

ZenChan
Book:Chan Insights and Oversights
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