Zen is not a particular state but the normal state: silent, peaceful, unagitated. In Zazen neither intention, analysis, specific effort nor imagination take place. It's enough just to be without hypocrisy, dogmatism, arrogance - embracing all opposites.

Taisen Deshimaru

Categorized in : Opposites Imagination Hypocrisy

Nobody today is normal, everybody is a little bit crazy or unbalanced, people's minds are running all the time. Their perceptions of the world are partial, incomplete. They are eaten alive by their egos. They think they see, but they are mistaken; all they do is project their madness, their world, upon the world. There is no clarity, no wisdom in that!

Taisen Deshimaru

crazy running thinking

Think with your whole body.

Taisen Deshimaru

buddhist inspirational life

Behavior influences consciousness. Right behavior means right consciousness. Our attitude here and now influences the entire environment: our words, actions, ways of holding and moving ourselves, they all influence what happens around us and inside us. The actions of every instant, every day, must be right...Every gesture is important. How we eat, how we put on our clothes, how we wash ourselves, how we go to the toilet, how we put our things away, how we act with other people, family, wife, work - how we are: totally, in every single gesture.

Taisen Deshimaru

attitude mean moving

Human beings are afraid of dying. They are always running after something: money, honor, and pleasure. But if you had to die now, what would you want?

Taisen Deshimaru

dying honor running

If you have a glass full of liquid you can discourse forever on its qualities, discuss whether it is cold, warm, whether it is really and truly composed of H-2-O, or even mineral water, or saki. Meditation is Drinking it!

Taisen Deshimaru

buddhist glasses drinking

To practice Zen or the Martial Arts, you must live intensely, wholeheartedly, without reserve - as if you might die in the next instant

Taisen Deshimaru

warrior practice art

To receive everything, one must open one's hands and give.

Taisen Deshimaru

helping-others kindness hands

You have to practice until you die.

Taisen Deshimaru

dies practice

If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.

Taisen Deshimaru

happy happiness inspirational

You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair.

Taisen Deshimaru

warrior fire hair

During zazen, brain and consciousness become pure. It's exactly like muddy water left to stand in a glass. Little by little, the sediment sinks to the bottom and the water becomes pure.

Taisen Deshimaru

glasses brain water

The body moves naturally, automatically, without any personal intervention or awareness. If we think too much, our actions become slow and hesitant.

Taisen Deshimaru

addiction moving thinking

Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." I say, "I do not think, that is why I exist."

Taisen Deshimaru

said thinking

In a fight between a strong technique and a strong body, technique will prevail. In a fight between a strong mind and a strong technique, mind will prevail, because it will find the weak point.

Taisen Deshimaru

fighting strong mind

Time is not a line, but a series of now-points.

Taisen Deshimaru

series lines mindfulness

Keep your hands open, and all the sands of the desert can pass through them. Close them, and all you can feel is a bit of grit.

Taisen Deshimaru

grit inspirational hands

You cannot separate any part from the whole: interdependence rules the cosmic order.

Taisen Deshimaru

cosmic interdependence order

What is called zazen is sitting on a zafu [pillow] in a quiet room, absolutely still, in the exact and proper position and without uttering a word, the mind empty of any thought, good or wicked. It is continuing to sit peacefully, facing a wall, and nothing more. Every day.

Taisen Deshimaru

wicked wall mind

We feel our shell keeps us safe, but it crushes us and others, and keeps out light and sun.

Taisen Deshimaru

shells crush light

Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance.

Taisen Deshimaru

buddhist opposites attitude