Top 250 Shunryu Suzuki Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “Zazen practice and everyday activity are one thing. We call zazen everyday life, and everyday life zazen.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

152. “When we do not expect anything we can be ourselves.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

153. “We can say either that we make progress little by little, or that we do not even expect to make progress. Just to be sincere and make our full effort in each moment is enough.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

154. “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

155. “To be different is to have value. In this sense all things have equal, absolute value. Each thing has absolute value and thus is equal to everything else.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

156. “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

157. “It is only by practicing through a continual succession of agreeable and disagreeable situations that we acquire true strengths. To accept that pain is inherent and to live our lives from this understanding is to create the causes and conditions for happiness.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

158. “We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence. We should find perfection in imperfection... The eternal exists because of non-eternal existence... We should find the truth in this world, through our difficulties, through our suffering... Pleasure is not different from difficulty. Good is not different from bad.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

159. “People who know the state of emptiness will always be able to dissolve their problems by constancy.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

160. “Life without zazen is like winding your clock without setting it. It runs perfectly well, but it dosen’t tell time.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

161. “In the zazen posture, your mind and body have, great power to accept things as they are, whether agreeable or disagreeable.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

162. “Religion is not any particular teaching. Religion is everywhere... We should forget all about some particular teaching; we should not ask which is good or bad. There should not be any particular teaching. Teaching is in each moment, in every existence. That is the true teaching.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

163. “If your practice is good, you may become proud of it. What you do is good, but something more is added to it. Pride is extra. Right effort is to get rid of something extra.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

164. “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

165. “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

166. “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

167. “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

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

— Shunryu Suzuki

169. “Concentration is not to try hard to watch something... Concentration means freedom... In zazen practice we say your mind should be concentrated on your breathing, but the way to keep your mind on your breathing is to forget all about yourself and just to sit and feel your breathing.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

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

— Shunryu Suzuki

171. “When you are practicing zazen, do not try to stop your thinking. Let it stop by itself. If something comes into your mind, let it come in, and let it go out. It will not stay long. When you try to stop your thinking, it means you are bothered by it. Do not be bothered by anything... if you are not bothered by the waves, gradually they will become calmer and calmer.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

172. “A mind full of preconceived ideas, subjective intentions, or habits is not open to things as they are. That is why we practice zazen: to clear our mind of what is related to something else.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

173. “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

174. “Each existence depends on something else... there are no separate individual existences. There are just many names for one existence.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

175. “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

176. “We die, and we do not die.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

177. “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

178. “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

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

— Shunryu Suzuki

180. “Bowing helps to eliminate our self-centered ideas. This is not so easy. It is difficult to get rid of these ideas, and bowing is a very valuable practice. The result is not the point; it is the effort to improve ourselves that is valuable. There is no end to this practice.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

181. “Whether you have a problem in your life or not depends upon your own attitude, your own understanding.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

182. “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

183. “Usually when you listen to some statement, you hear it as a kind of echo of yourself. You are actually listening to your own opinion. If it agrees with your opinion you may accept it, but if it does not, you will reject it or you may not even really hear it.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

184. “To have a headache will be all right, because you are healthy enough to have a headache.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

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

— Shunryu Suzuki

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

— Shunryu Suzuki

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

— Shunryu Suzuki

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

— Shunryu Suzuki

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

— Shunryu Suzuki

190. “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

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

— Shunryu Suzuki

192. “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

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

— Shunryu Suzuki

194. “If you are ready to accept things as they are, you will receive them as old friends, even though you appreciate them with new feeling.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

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

— Shunryu Suzuki

196. “It is the readiness of the mind that is wisdom.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

197. “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

198. “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

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

— Shunryu Suzuki

200. “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