Week 2022-25: Shunryu Suzuki - Collected Quotes

"However 'civilized', however much brought up in an artificially contrived environment, we all seem to have an innate longing for primitive simplicity, close to the natural state of living.” (Shunryu Suzuki)"

"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)

"In other words, just practice Zen meditation in a certain posture. Do not think about anything. Just remain on your cushion without expecting anything. Then eventually you will resume your own true nature. That is to say, your own true nature resumes itself." (Shunryu Suzuki)

"In your practice you should accept everything as it is, giving to each thing the same respect given to a Buddha. Then Buddha bows to Buddha, and you bow to yourself. This is the true bow." (Shunryu Suzuki)

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." (Shunryu Suzuki)

"In Zen we put emphasis on demeanor, or behavior. By behavior we do not mean a particular way that you ought to behave, but rather the natural expression of yourself. We emphasize straightforwardness. You should be true to your feelings, and to your mind, expressing yourself without any reservations. This helps the listener to understand more easily." (Shunryu Suzuki)

"It is easy to have calmness in inactivity, it is hard to have calmness in activity, but calmness in activity is true calmness." (Shunryu Suzuki)

"Practice without an idea of gaining is called Buddha’s practice." (Shunryu Suzuki)

"The true practice of [meditation] is to sit as if you were drinking water when you are thirsty." (Shunryu Suzuki)

"There are, strictly speaking, no Enlightened people, there is only Enlightened activity." (Shunryu Suzuki)

"To express yourself as you are is the most important thing." (Shunryu Suzuki)

"When you are practicing Zen Meditation do not try and 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 and stop your thinking, it means you are bothered by it. Do not be bothered by anything." (Shunryu Suzuki)

"Without any intentional, fancy way of adjusting yourself, to express yourself as you are is the most important thing." (Shunryu Suzuki)

Week 2022-24: Daisetzu T Suzuki - Collected Quotes

"Buddhists have conceived an object as an event and not as a thing or substance [...] The Buddhist conception of ‘things’ as samskara (or sankhara), that is, as ‘deeds’, or ‘events’, makes it clear that Buddhists understand our experience in terms of time and movement." (Daisetzu T Suzuki , "The Essence of Buddhism", 1947)

"The central idea of Kegon is to grasp the universe dynamically whose characteristic is always to move onward, to be forever in the mood of moving, which is life." (Daisetzu T Suzuki, "The Essence of Buddhism", 1947)

"The fundamental idea of Buddhism is to pass beyond the world of opposites, a world built up by intellectual distinctions and emotional defilements, and to realize the spiritual world of non-distinction, which involves achieving an absolute point of view."(Daisetzu T Suzuki, "The Essence of Buddhism", 1947)

"When the one is set against all the others, the one is seen as pervading them all and at the same time embracing them all in itself.” (Daisetzu T Suzuki, "The Essence of Buddhism")

"The discipline of Zen consists in opening the mental eye in order to look into the very reason of existence." (Daisetzu T Suzuki, "An Introduction to Zen Buddhism", 1964)

"In this spiritual world there are no time divisions such as the past, present and future; for they have contracted themselves into a single moment of the present where life quivers in its true sense [...] The past and the future are both rolled up in this present moment of illumination, and this present moment is not something standing still with all its contents, for it ceaselessly moves on." (Daisetzu T Suzuki, "On Indian Mahayana Buddhism", 1968)

"Clinging is never kept within bounds,
It is sure to go the wrong way; Quit it and things follow their own courses,
While the Essence neither departs or abides." (Daisetzu T Suzuki)

"Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious." (Daisetzu T Suzuki)

"The fighter is to be always single-minded with one object in view: to fight, looking neither backward nor sidewise. To go straight forward in order to crush the enemy is all that is necessary for him." (Daisetzu T Suzuki)

"The seeing plays the most important role in Buddhist epistemology, for seeing is at the basis of knowing. Knowing is impossible without seeing; all knowledge has its origin in seeing. Knowing and seeing are thus found generally united in Buddha’s teaching. Buddhist philosophy therefore ultimately points to seeing reality as it is. Seeing is experiencing enlightenment." (Daisetzu T Suzuki)

"The significance of the Avatamsaka and its philosophy is unintelligible unless we once experience [...] a state of complete dissolution where there is no more distinction between mind and body, subject and object [...] We look around and perceive that [...] every object is related to every other object [...] not only spatially, but temporally. [...] As a fact of pure experience, there is no space without time, no time without space; they are interpenetrating." (Daisetzu T Suzuki)

"There is harmony in our activity, and where there is harmony there is calmness." (Daisetzu T Suzuki)

"When there is no crookedness in one's heart, we say that one is natural and childlike." (Daisetzu T Suzuki)

"Zen is discipline in enlightenment" (Daisetzu T Suzuki)

"Zen purposes to discipline the mind itself, to make it its own master, through an insight into its proper nature. This getting into the real nature of one's own mind or soul is the fundamental object of Zen Buddhism. Zen, therefore, is more than meditation and Dhyana in its ordinary sense. The discipline of Zen consists in opening the mental eye in order to look into the very reason of existence." (Daisetsu T Suzuki)

Week 2022-23: Ajahn Chah - Collected Quotes

"If you let go a little, you will have a little peace.
If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.
If you let go completely, you will have complete peace." (Ajahn Chah)

"If your mind is happy then you are happy anywhere you go. When wisdom awakens within you, you will see Truth wherever you look. Truth is all there is. It’s like when you learned how to read, you can then read anywhere you go." (Ajahn Chah)

"Just go into the room, sit in the centre of the room, open the doors and windows, and see who comes to visit. You will witness all kinds of scenes and actors, all kinds of temptations and stories, everything imaginable. Your only job is to stay in your seat. You will see it all arise and pass, and out of this, wisdom and understanding will come." (Ajahn Chah)

"Mental activity is like a deadly poisonous cobra. If we don't interfere with a cobra, how poisonous it may be, it simply goes its own away." (Ajahn Chah)

"The Buddha told us to see the way things are and let go of our clinging to them. Take this feeling of letting go as your refuge." (Ajahn Chah)

"With even a little intuitive wisdom we will be able to see clearly the ways of the world. We will come to understand that everything in the world is our teacher." (Ajahn Chah)

"You are your own teacher. Looking for teachers can’t solve your own doubts. Investigate yourself to find the truth - inside, not outside. Knowing yourself is most important. Read yourself, not books. Just know what is happening in your mind - not happy or sad about it, not attached. If you suffer see it, know it, and be empty." (Ajahn Chah)

Week 2022-22: Swami Vivekananda - Collected Quotes

"A good practice carried to an extreme and worked in accordance with the letter of the law becomes a positive evil." (Swami Vivekananda)

"All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything." (Swami Vivekananda)

"All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in our own mind." (Swami Vivekananda)

"All knowledge, secular or spiritual, is in the human mind. In many cases it is not discovered but remains covered, and when the covering is being slowly taken off, we say, "We are learning." The advance of knowledge is made by the advance of this process of uncovering. The person from whom this veil is being lifted is the knowing person, the person upon whom it lies thick is ignorant, and the one from whom it has entirely gone is all-knowing." (Swami Vivekananda)

"All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore love for love's sake, because it is the only law of life, just as you breathe to live." (Swami Vivekananda)

"All power is within you; you can do anything and everything. Believe in that, do not believe that you are weak; do not believe that you are half-crazy lunatics, as most of us do nowadays. You can do any thing and everything, without even the guidance of any one. Stand up and express the divinity within you." (Swami Vivekananda)

"All the knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in your own mind. The external world is simply the suggestion, the occasion, which sets you to study your own mind, but the object of your study is always your own mind. The falling of an apple gave the suggestion to Newton, and he studied his own mind. He rearranged all the previous links of thought in his mind and discovered a new link among them, which we call the law of gravitation." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Anything that is secret and mysterious in these systems of yoga should be at once rejected. The best guide in life is strength. In religion, as in all other matters, discard everything that weakens you, have nothing to do with it." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Anything that makes weak - physically, intellectually and spiritually, reject it as poison." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Books are infinite in number and time is short. The secret of knowledge is to take what is essential. Take that and try to live up to it." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Dare to be free, dare to go as far as your thought leads, and dare to carry that out in your life." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Do not believe in a thing because you have read about it in a book. Do not believe in a thing because another man has said it was true. Do not believe in words because they are hallowed by tradition. Find out the truth for yourself. Reason it out. That is realization." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Each work has to pass through these stages - ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy - by one, or more, or all of these - and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Education is the manifestation of perfection already existing in man." (Swami Vivekananda)

"I am a voice without a form. It may be that I shall find it good to get outside of my body-to cast it off like a worn-out garment. But I shall not cease to work! I shall inspire men and women everywhere, until the world shall know that it is one with God." (Swami Vivekananda)

"If a man continuously hears bad words, thinks bad thoughts, does bad actions, his mind will be full of bad impressions; and they will influence his thought and work without his being conscious of the fact. He will be like a machine in the hands of his impressions, and they will force him to do evil, and that man will be a bad man; he cannot help it. Similarly, if a man thinks good thoughts and does good works, the sum total of these impressions will be good, and they, in a similar manner, will force him to do good, even in spite of himself. When such is the case, a man's good character is said to be established." (Swami Vivekananda)

"In a conflict between the heart and the brain, follow your heart. " (Swami Vivekananda)

"In a day, when you don't come across any problems - you can be sure that you are travelling in a wrong path." (Swami Vivekananda)

"It is a tremendous truth that if there be real worth in you, the more are circumstances against you, the more will that inner power manifest itself" (Swami Vivekananda)

"Let us work on, doing as we go whatever happens to be our duty, and being ever ready to put our shoulders to the wheel. Then surely shall we see the Light!" (Swami Vivekananda)

"Love is always mutual and reflective. You may hate me, and if I want to love you, you repulse me. But if I persist, in a month or a year you are bound to love me. It is a well-known psychological phenomenon." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Mind is action of its own nature. Mind-activity means creation. The thought is followed by the word, and the word by the form. All of this creating will have to stop, both mental and physical, before the mind can reflect the soul." (Swami Vivekananda)

"My ideal indeed can be put into a few words and that is; to preach unto mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every movement of life. God is in every man, whether man knows it or not; your loving devotion is bound to call up the divinity in him." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Neither seek nor avoid, take what comes." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Never think there is anything impossible for the soul." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Next to spiritual comes intellectual help; the gift of knowledge is a far higher gift... because the real life of man consists of knowledge; ignorance is death, knowledge is life." (Swami Vivekananda)

"No knowledge comes from outside; it is all inside. What we say a we "know," should-in strict psychological language-be what we "discover" or "unveil." What we "learn" is really what we "discover" by taking the cover off our own soul, which is the mirror of infinite knowledge." (Swami Vivekananda)

"No one can get amything unless he earns it. This is an eternal law." (Swami Vivekananda)

"None can hate others without degenerating himself." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Of one hundred persons who take up the spiritual life, eighty turn out to be charlatans, fifteen insane, and only five, maybe, get a glimpse of the real truth. Therefore beware." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Religion is the manifestation of the divinity already in man." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Stand up, be hold, and take the blame on your own shoulders. Do not go about throwing mud at others; for all the faults you duffer from, you are the sole and only cause." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Strength, strength it is that we want so much in this life, for what we call sin and sorrow have all one cause, and that is our weakness. With weakness comes ignorance, and with ignorance comes misery." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life; dream of it; think of it; live on that idea. Let the brain, the body, muscles, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life; dream of it; think of it; live on that idea. Let the brain, the body, muscles, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Teach yourself, teach everyone his real nature, call upon the sleeping soul and see how it awakes. Power will come, glory will come, goodness will come, purity will come, and everything that is excellent will come when this sleeping soul is roused to self-conscious activity." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The attempt to remove evil from the world by killing a thousand evil-doers only adds to the evil in the world. But if the people can be made to desist from evil doing, by means of spiritual instruction, there is no more evil in the world." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The brain and muscles must develop simultaneously. Iron nerves with an intelligent brain — and the whole world is at your feet." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The gift of knowledge is the highest gift in the world." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The greatest help to spiritual life is meditation. In meditation we divest ourselves of all material condition and feel our divine nature." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The greatest sin is to think yourself weak." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The greatest truths are the simplest things in the world, simple as your own existence." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The help which tends to make us spiritually strong is the highest help, next to it comes intellectual help and after that comes physical help." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The mistake is that we want to tie the whole world down to our own plane of thought and to make our mind the measure of the whole universe." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The more our bliss is within, the more spiritual we are. Let us not depend upon the world for pleasure." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The powers of the mind are like the rays of the sun when they are concentrated they illumine." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The present system of education is all wrong. The mind is crammed with facts before it knows how to think. Control of the mind should be taught first. It takes people a long time to learn things because they can't concentrate their minds at will." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will which is free." (Swami Vivekananda)

"There is no limit to the power of the human mind. The more concentrated it is, the more power is brought to bear on one point." (Swami Vivekananda)

"This is the gist of all worship - to be pure and to do good to others." (Swami Vivekananda)

"This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive." (Swami Vivekananda)

"This universe is the wreckage of the infinite on the shores of the finite." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Time, space, and causation are like the glass through which the Absolute is seen. [...] In the Absolute there is neither time, space, nor causation." (Swami Vivekananda , "Jnana Yoga")

"To be good and to do good that is the whole of religion." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Truth is purity. Truth is all knowledge; truth must be strengthening, must be enlightening, must be invigorating." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Truth, purity and unselfishness - whatever these are present, there is no power below or above the sun to crush the possessor thereof. Equipped with these, one individual is able to face the whole universe in opposition." (Swami Vivekananda)

"We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in the future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act." (Swami Vivekananda)

"We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far." (Swami Vivekananda)

"What is education? Is it book-learning? No. Is it diverse knowledge? Not even that. The training by which the current and expression of will are brought under control and become fruitful is called education." (Swami Vivekananda)

"What is now wanted is a combination of the greatest heart with the highest intellectuality, of infinite love with infinite knowledge." (Swami Vivekananda)

"When an idea exclusively occupies the mind, it is transformed into an actual physical or mental state." (Swami Vivekananda)

"You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. 
There is no other teacher but your own soul." (Swami Vivekananda)