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“Pulling out the weeds we give nourishment to the plant.”
“We pull the weeds and bury them near the plant to give it nourishment.”
“In our practice we have no particular purpose, no particular gain.”
“Just sit. The sitting is the practice.”
“You should not be too demanding or greedy. We have to be grateful for what we have.”
“To be very grateful is the way to express the deepest mind.”
“In the beginner's mind there is no thought, I have attained something.”
“Buddha is always in difficulty. He is never in repose.”
“In our zazen practice we cut off the thinking activity, and we are pure as a clear sky.”
“There is no need to have a deep understanding of Zen.”
“You have to find your own way, and you have to know where you are.”
“Don't move. Just die over and over.”
“Don't anticipate. Don't think about the future or the past.”
“Just actually die. Not poetry. Just death itself.”
“True practice is not to give people things they like.”
“Even though you have practiced for many years, true practice is the same first practice.”
“There is no special way of practice. Each moment is the moment of practice.”
“In Buddhism we say: when something appears, the most important thing is the appearance itself.”
“The most important thing is to find out what is the most important thing.”
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