Top 250 Shunryu Suzuki Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Try not to force your idea on someone, but rather think about it with him. If you feel you have won the discussion, that is the wrong attitude. Try not to win the argument; just listen to it.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

152. “If you take pride in your attainment or become discouraged because of your idealistic effort, your practice will confine you by a thick wall.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

153. “You must be true to your own way until at last you actually come to the point where you see it is necessary to forget all about yourself.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

154. “If I tell you something, you will stick to it and limit your own capacity to find out for yourself.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

155. “A mind full of preconceived ideas, subjective intentions, or habits it not open to things as they are.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

156. “When we become truly ourselves, we just become a swinging door, and we are purely independent of, and at the same time, dependent upon everything.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

157. “People say that practicing Zen is difficult, but there is a misunderstanding as to why. It is not difficult because it is hard to sit in the cross- legged position, or to attain enlightenment. It is difficult because it is hard to keep our mind pure and our practice pure in its fundamental sense.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

158. “Our practice should be based on the ideal of selflessness. Selflessness is very difficult to understand. If you try to be selfless, that is already a selfish idea. Selflessness will be there when you do not try anything.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

159. “Tai Shimano visited Shunryu Suzuki. “How are you feeling these days?” Suzuki replied, “They have a new name for me: Cancer!””

— Shunryu Suzuki

160. “If you think you will get something from practicing zazen, already you are involved in impure practice.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

161. “Everything changes. There is nothing to stick to. That is the Buddha’s most important teaching.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

162. “Wabi means spare, impoverished; simple and functional. It connotes a transcendence of fad and fashion. The spirit of wabi imbues all the Zen arts, from calligraphy to karate, from the tea ceremony to Zen archery.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

163. “If you want to study Zen, you should forget all your previous ideas and just practice zazen and see what kind of experience you have in your practice. That is naturalness.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

164. “Those who are attached only to the result of their effort will not have any chance to appreciate it, because the result will never come.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

165. “Reality cannot be caught by thinking or feeling mind.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

166. “It is when your practice is rather greedy that you become discouraged with it. So you should be grateful that you have a sign or warning signal to show you the weak point in your practice.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

167. “So even though you have some difficulty in your practice, even though you have some waves while you are sitting, those waves themselves will help you.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

168. “To have some deep feeling about Buddhism is not the point; we just do what we should do, like eating supper and going to bed. This is Buddhism.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

169. “There is no certain way that exists permanently... Moment after moment we have to find our own way.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

170. “We die, and we do not die.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

171. “The way that helps will not be the same; it changes according to the situation.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

172. “Those who sit perfectly physically usually take more time to obtain the true way of Zen.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

173. “But the purpose of studying Buddhism is to study ourselves and to forget ourselves. When we forget ourselves, we actually are the true activity of the big existence, or reality itself.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

174. “More important than any stage which you will attain is your sincerity, your right effort.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

175. “When there is no gaining idea in what you do, then you do something.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

176. “For the beginner, practice without effort is not true practice.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

177. “Not to be attached to something is to be aware of its absolute value.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

178. “Pleasure is not different from difficulty. Good is not different from bad. Bad is good; good is bad. They are two sides of one coin. So enlightenment should be in practice. That is the right understanding of practice, and the right understanding of our life. So to find pleasure in suffering is the only way to accept the truth of transiency.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

179. “The more you practice zazen, the more you will be able to accept something as your own, whatever it is.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

180. “While you are continuing this practice, week after week, year after year, your experience will become deeper and deeper, and your experience will cover everything you do in your everyday life.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

181. “When you do something, just to do it should be your purpose.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

183. “Movement is nothing but the quality of our being.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

184. “When you understand one thing through and through, you understand everything. When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything. The.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

185. “We say, “A good father is not a good father.” Do you understand? One who thinks he is a good father is not a good father; one who thinks he is a good husband is not a good husband. One who thinks he is one of the worst husbands may be a good one if he is always trying to be a good husband with a single-hearted effort.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

186. “We ourselves cannot put any magic spells on this world. The world is its own magic.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

187. “Christopher McCandless:“I will miss you too, but you are wrong if you think that the joy of life comes principally from the joy of human relationships. God’s place is all around us, it is in everything and in anything we can experience. People just need to change the way they look at things.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

188. “This is the mystery. When you understand one thing through and through, you understand everything. When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything. The best way is to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything. So when you try hard to make your own way, you will help others, and you will be helped by others. Before you make your own way you cannot help anyone, and no one can help you. To.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

189. “When you know everything, you are like a dark sky. Sometimes a flashing will come through the dark sky. After it passes, you forget all about it, and there is nothing left but the dark sky. The sky is never surprised when all of a sudden a thunderbolt breaks through. And when the lightning does flash, a wonderful sight may be seen. When we have emptiness we are always prepared for watching the flashing.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

190. “We must have beginner’s mind, free from possessing anything, a mind that knows everything is in flowing change. Nothing exists but momentarily in its present form and color. One thing flows into another and cannot be grasped. Before the rain stops we hear a bird. Even under the heavy snow we see snowdrops and some new growth. In the East I saw rhubarb already. In Japan in the spring we eat cucumbers.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

191. “When you accept everything, everything is beyond dimensions. The earth is not great nor a grain of sand small. In the realm of Great Activity picking up a grain of sand is the same as taking up the whole universe. To save one sentient being is to save all sentient beings. Your efforts of this moment to save one person is the same as the eternal merit of Buddha.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

192. “When we see a part of the moon covered by a cloud, or a tree, or a weed, we feel how round the moon is. But when we see the clear moon without anything covering it, we do not feel that roundness the same way we do when we see it through something else.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

193. “When we hear the sound of the pine trees on a windy day, perhaps the wind is just blowing, and the pine tree is just standing in the wind. That is all they are doing. But the people who listen to the wind in the tree will write a poem, or will feel something unusual. That is, I think, the way everything is.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

194. “In your very imperfections you will find the basis for your firm, way-seeking mind.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

195. “Now it is raining, but we don’t know what will happen in the next moment. By the time we go out it may be a beautiful day, or a stormy day. Since we don’t know, let’s appreciate the sound of the rain now.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

196. “Suppose you recite the Prajna Paramita Sutra only once. It might be a very good recitation. But what would happen to you if you recited it twice, three times, four times, or more? You might easily lose your original attitude towards it. The same thing will happen in your other Zen practices. For a while you will keep your beginner’s mind, but if you continue to practice one, two, three years or more, although you may improve some, you are liable to lose the limitless meaning of original mind.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

197. “Without ignoring the objective side of the truth, it has to be subjective as well, Buddha’s whole teaching just for you, something you can taste. Not something to believe in but to discover, to experience.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

198. “When you bow, you should just bow; when you sit, you should just sit; when you eat, you should just eat.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

199. “Just as you unreel the thread from a spool, I want the past to become present.” When she said this, actually she made past time present. In her mind the past became alive and was the present.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

200. “When everything exists within your big mind, all dualistic relationships drop away. There is no distinction between heaven and earth, man and woman, teacher and disciple. Sometimes a man bows to a woman; sometimes a woman bows to a man. Sometimes the disciple bows to the master; sometimes the master bows to the disciple... In your big mind, everything has the same value.”

— Shunryu Suzuki