Top 90 D.T. Suzuki Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I am an artist at living – my work of art is my life.”

— D.T. Suzuki

Featured in: Zen Quotes

2. “Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities.”

— D.T. Suzuki

3. “When we start to feel anxious or depressed, instead of asking, “What do I need to get to be happy?” The question becomes, “What am I doing to disturb the inner peace that I already have?””

— D.T. Suzuki

4. “Great works are done when one is not calculating and thinking.”

— D.T. Suzuki

5. “Zen teaches nothing; it merely enables us to wake up and become aware. It does not teach, it points.”

— D.T. Suzuki

6. “That’s why I love philosophy: no one wins.”

— D.T. Suzuki

7. “To live – is that not enough?”

— D.T. Suzuki

8. “We have two eyes to see two sides of things, but there must be a third eye which will see everything at the same time and yet not see anything. That is to understand Zen.”

— D.T. Suzuki

9. “The truth of Zen is the truth of life, and life means to live, to move, to act, not merely to reflect.”

— D.T. Suzuki

10. “Zen has no business with ideas.”

— D.T. Suzuki

11. “Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious.”

— D.T. Suzuki

12. “Life, according to Zen, ought to be lived as a bird flies through the air, or as a fish swims in the water.”

— D.T. Suzuki

13. “You ought to know how to rise above the trivialities of life, in which most people are found drowning themselves.”

— D.T. Suzuki

14. “Dhyana is retaining one’s tranquil state of mind in any circumstance, unfavorable as well as favorable, and not being disturbed or frustrated even when adverse conditions present themselves one after another.”

— D.T. Suzuki

15. “Not to be bound by rules, but to be creating one’s own rules-this is the kind of life which Zen is trying to have us live.”

— D.T. Suzuki

16. “The meaning of service is to do the work assigned ungrudgingly and without thought of personal reward material or moral.”

— D.T. Suzuki

17. “The waters are in motion, but the moon retains its serenity.”

— D.T. Suzuki

18. “Unless we die to ourselves, we can never be alive again.”

— D.T. Suzuki

19. “Unless it grows out of yourself no knowledge is really yours, it is only borrowed plumage.”

— D.T. Suzuki

20. “Unless we agree to suffer we cannot be free from suffering.”

— D.T. Suzuki

21. “Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?”

— D.T. Suzuki

22. “We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.”

— D.T. Suzuki

23. “Implicity, there should be something mysterious in every day.”

— D.T. Suzuki

24. “We do not realize that as soon as our thoughts cease and all attempts at forming ideas are forgotten the Buddha reveals himself before us.”

— D.T. Suzuki

25. “Enlightenment is like everyday consciousness but two inches above the ground.”

— D.T. Suzuki

26. “The intuitive recognition of the instant, thus reality is the highest act of wisdom.”

— D.T. Suzuki

27. “To be a good Zen Buddhist it is not enough to follow the teaching of its founder; we have to experience the Buddha’s experience.”

— D.T. Suzuki

28. “Zen in it’s essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one’s being, and it points the way from bondage to freedom.”

— D.T. Suzuki

29. “As soon as you raise a thought and begin to form an idea of it, you ruin the reality itself, because you then attach yourself to form.”

— D.T. Suzuki

30. “To Zen, time and eternity are one.”

— D.T. Suzuki

31. “One has not understood until one has forgotten it.”

— D.T. Suzuki

32. “Let the intellect alone, it has its usefulness in its proper sphere, but let it not interfere with the flowing of the life-stream.”

— D.T. Suzuki

33. “Personal experience, therefore, is everything in Zen. No ideas are intelligible to those who have no backing of experience.”

— D.T. Suzuki

34. “Fundamentally the marksman aims at himself.”

— D.T. Suzuki

35. “To point at the moon a finger is needed, but woe to those who take the finger for the moon...”

— D.T. Suzuki

36. “If I am asked If I am asked, then, what Zen teaches, I would answer, Zen teaches nothing. Whatever teachings there are in Zen, they come out of one’s own mind. We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.”

— D.T. Suzuki

37. “The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow.”

— D.T. Suzuki

38. “The way to ascend unto God is to descend into one’s self”; – these are Hugo’s words. “If thou wishest to search out the deep things of God, search out the depths of thine own spirit”;.”

— D.T. Suzuki

39. “Eternity is the Absolute present.”

— D.T. Suzuki

40. “When I say that Zen is life, I mean that Zen is not to be confined within conceptualization, that Zen is what makes conceptualization possible.”

— D.T. Suzuki

41. “Zen is the spirit of a man. Zen believes in his inner purity and goodness. Whatever is superadded or violently torn away, injures the wholesomeness of the spirit. Zen, therefore, is emphatically against all religious conventionalism.”

— D.T. Suzuki

42. “The claim of the Zen followers that they are transmitting the essence of Buddhism is based on their belief that Zen takes hold of the enlivening spirit of the Buddha, stripped of all its historical and doctrinal garments.”

— D.T. Suzuki

43. “The worst passion we mortals cherish is the desire to possess. Even when we know that our final destination is a hole not more than three feet square, we have the strongest craving.”

— D.T. Suzuki

44. “Zen approaches it from the practical side of life-that is, to work out Enlightenment in life itself.”

— D.T. Suzuki

45. “Facts of experience are valued in Zen more than representations, symbols, and concepts-that is to say, substance is everything in Zen and form nothing.”

— D.T. Suzuki

46. “Zen wants us to acquire an entirely new point of view whereby to look into the mysteries of life and the secrets of nature. This is because Zen has come to the definite conclusion that the ordinary logical process of reasoning is powerless to give final satisfaction to our deepest spiritual needs.”

— D.T. Suzuki

47. “We can see unmistakeably that there is an inner relationship between Zen and the warrior’s life.”

— D.T. Suzuki

48. “Zen Makes use, to a great extent, of poetical expressions; Zen is wedded to poetry.”

— D.T. Suzuki

49. “Zen has nothing to teach us in the way of intellectual analysis; nor has it any set doctrines which are imposed on its followers for acceptance.”

— D.T. Suzuki

50. “When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect the mountain exercises vanishes into the air.”

— D.T. Suzuki