Juan Antonio

“Taking it all in all, Zen is emphatically a matter of personal experience; if anything can be called radically empirical, it is Zen. No amount of reading, no amount of teaching, no amount of contemplation will ever make one a Zen master. Life itself must be grasped in the midst of its flow; to stop it for examination and analysis is to kill it, leaving its cold corpse to be embraced.”
― D.T. Suzuki, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism

“In Christianity we seem to be too conscious of God, though we say that in him we live and move and have our being. Zen wants to have this last trace of God-consciousness, if possible, obliterated. That is why Zen masters advise us not to linger where the Buddha is, and to pass quickly away where he is not.”
― D.T. Suzuki, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism

“The idea of Zen is to catch lie as it flows. There is nothing extraordinary or mysterious about Zen. [...]. No wordy discussion is necessary, nor any explanation. I do not know why—and there is no need of explaining, but when the sun rises the whole world dances with joy and everybody's heart is filled with bliss. If Zen is at all conceivable, it must be taken hold of here.”
― D.T. Suzuki, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism

“Copying is slavery. The letter must never be followed, only the spirit is to be grasped.
Higher affirmations live in the spirit. And where is the spirit? Seek it in your everyday experience, and therein lies abundance of proof for all you need.”
― D.T. Suzuki, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism