Suzuki Roshi Quotes

A student, filled with emotion and crying, implored, "Why is there so much suffering?" Suzuki Roshi replied, "No reason.

I stole this from Zen Master Suzuki Roshi: If it's not paradoxical it's not true!

The Soto Zen priest Suzuki Roshi said, “All of you are perfect, and you could use a little improvement.

In his talk, Suzuki Roshi says that meditation and the whole process of finding your own true nature is one continuous mistake, and that rather than that being a reason for depression or discouragement, it's actually the motivation.

The most important thing is remembering the most important thing.

As the Zen master Suzuki Roshi put it, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.

Renunciation Suzuki Roshi said, “Renunciation is not giving up the things of this world, but accepting that they go away.” Everything is impermanent; sooner or later everything goes away. Renunciation is a state of nonattachment, acceptance of this going away. Impermanence is, in fact, just another name for perfection. Leaves fall; debris and garbage accumulate; out of the debris come flowers, greenery, things that we think are lovely. Destruction is necessary. A good forest fire is necessary. The way we interfere with forest fires may not be a good thing. Without destruction, there could be no new life; and the wonder of life, the constant change, could not be. We must live and die. And this process is perfection itself.

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are few.

[Zuzuki-roshi] I don’t know anything about consciousness. I just try to teach my students how to hear the birds sing.

When asked to sum up the Buddha’s teachings in one phrase, Suzuki Roshi said, “Everything changes.

When you try to stop your thinking, it means you are bothered by it. Do not be bothered by anything.” —Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

The secret of Zen is just two words: not always so. —SHUNRYU SUZUKI ROSHI

student remembers a lecture where Suzuki Roshi said, “If it’s not paradoxical, it’s not true.

In the mind of the beginner, all things are possible, But in the mind of the expert, only a few. Zen Master Suzuki-Roshi

Suzuki Roshi once said to his Sixties American students that the way they dressed- with beads, long hair, brightly colored clothes-they all looked alike. Shave your heads, wear black robes, he said- Ah, now I can see your uniqueness. Our ideas and intentions can mask and cover up a story; there is a life force that will declare itself if you let it. Get out of the way.

people astray and into potentially horrific acts. Both of these views relate to the world that is delivered to us by our senses. There is a third way that Buddhist practitioners know as “Emptiness.” This is the unseen, formless energy that extrudes itself as the myriad forms of the world, creating and then retrieving them back to the source. Suzuki Roshi suggested that we think of it as the white screen in a movie theater, the unseen background against which the shimmering movie of

One time Marian showed me some sand. When she gave it to me, she said, "These are very interesting stones." It just looked like sand, but she asked me to took through a magnifying glass. Then those small stones were as interesting as the stones I have in my office. The stones in my office are bigger, but under the glass the sand was quite similar. If you say, "This is a rock from the moon", you will be very much interested in it. Actually I don't think there is a great difference between rocks we have on the earth and those on the moon. Even if you go to Mars, I think you will find the same rocks. I am quite sure about it. So if you want to find something interesting, instead of hopping around the universe like this, enjoy your life in every moment, observe what you have now, and truly live in your surroundings.

By the mid-1960s, students at Zen Center called their teacher Suzuki-roshi. The title roshi traditionally was accorded only to a few venerable Zen masters in Japan; however, in the West, it became customary to refer to all Zen teachers who receive Transmission as roshis.

Suzuki-roshi's historic Transmission of the dharma to one and only one American man haunts everything that ever happened at Zen Center.

To practice zazen, Suzuki-roshi often reminded his students, is to study the self. By 1983, the senior priests at Zen Center had logged a lot of hours in the study hall. The work and meditation schedule they kept was famous for its rigor. Typically, they sat for almost two hours every morning, beginning at five, attended a midday service, and sat again for an hour or two in the evening until nine. During the two annual Practice Periods, the daily meditation periods were extended. Once a month, they sat for twelve or fourteen hours—a one-day sesshin (intensive retreat). At the end of each Practice Period, they sat a seven day sesshin—twelve to fourteen hours a day for seven straight days, during which they took their meager meals in the zendo, and slept on their cushions. In fifteen years, Reb, Yvonne, Lew, and the other senior students who'd kept the daily schedule had each sat zazen for at least 10,000 to 15,000 hours. And yet, by any common-sense standard, the most seasoned meditators at Zen Center repeatedly flunked simple tests of self-awareness. "I wonder," wrote a former Zen Center student in a letter to Yvonne in 1987, "if in some cases doing zazen doesn't augment or aggravate the dissociative process—as if in some way it cauterizes the personality and seals it off, encapsulates it, widens the breach between heart and mind.

Suzuki-roshi's students in America were laypeople who practiced like monks. This seemed so innovative, so unprecedented, that scholars and theologians told the students at Zen Center that they were the vanguard of a Buddhist reformation. And Suzuki-roshi apparently believed this was true. He had asked Richard to reform Buddhism in Japan. But seen from Japan, the Zen Center model might have looked like backwards Buddhism. For almost two hundred years, the monks in Japan had been practicing as laypeople. When Suzuki-roshi arrived in America, he inverted the model by necessity; he had to begin with laypeople because there were no American monks. It was a long road from Sokoji to Tassajara. But they got there. They escaped from the world and holed up in a monastery. And then they transformed Tassajara. And it began to look a lot like Eiheiji. During services, the Americans even managed to chant in Japanese. What was the big difference? The distinction was really a matter of degree. What distinguished the Americans from the Japanese was their determination to sustain the intensity of monastic practice after they left the monastery.

Suzuki-roshi never wanted to be called roshi, a title traditionally accorded only to the most esteemed Zen masters in Japan; it denoted not only advanced age but experience—as a teacher and of enlightenment. He felt the term was too grand for him. He preferred to be called Suzuki-sensei (sensei means teacher). Some of his students who'd been to Japan early on did call him roshi. Several students believe they were the first to do so. However, the term was used in 1961 in the very first Zen Center newslet- ter, and then it dropped out of general use. Richard remembers that he and another practitioner used the term early on. Most students credit Alan Watts with the widespread adoption of the title. Watts was bothered by the oddity of such references as Reverend Suzuki, and he wrote a note in 1966 urging everyone at Zen Center to urge their teacher to do just what he had said he didn't want to do and accept the roshi title, as would be tra- ditional in Japan. And he did. Thus, Suzuki-roshi.

Every day no matter what” is a gift to your soul, a gift of remembering. As Zen master Suzuki Roshi puts it: The most important thing is remembering the most important thing. Every day. The daily pause to just be present builds on itself and creates a gravitational field that increasingly calls you to presence throughout all the moments of your life.

What I try to convey to my patients is that they can meet the challenges life throws at them by changing the way they relate to them. The goal is to meet the challenges with equanimity, not to make them go away. When Suzuki Roshi said not to be bothered by the waves' fluctuations, he meant it. And one thing we can say for sure. Life gives us endless opportunity to practice. Mostly we fail. Who can say they are not bothered by anything, really? But when we make the effort, the results can be astonishing. In an insecure world, we can become our own refuge. Our eon do not have to have the last word.

Un fluide insaisissable coule d'une génération à l'autre. Lorsque nous développons nos antennes et apprenons à déceler partout la trace d'autres passants, d'autres humains vivants ou morts, alors notre façon d'être au monde se dilate et s'agrandit. Je suis le témoin de la scène suivante : Un ami de longue date, Richard Baker Roshi, héritier dharma de Suzuki Roshi, et sa fille de trois ans sont installés à la table du petit déjeuner chez nous. Sophie commence avec son couteau à rayer la table. Et grâce à ce geste qui ne m'as guère enchantée, voilà que j'assiste à une leçon de transmission. Le père arrête avec douceur la petite main. "Halte, Sophie, à qui est cette table ?" Alors la petite fille boudeuse : "Je sais ! A Christiane. - Non, mais avant Christiane !... Elle est ancienne cette table, n'est-ce pas ? D'autres ont déjeuné là... - Oui, les parents, les grands-parents, les.... - ... Mais ce n'est pas tout !.... Avant encore ?... Elle a appartenu à l'ébéniste qui en avait acquis le bois. Mais d'où venait-il ce bois ?... Oui, d'un arbre qu'avait abattu le bûcheron... mais l'arbre, à qui appartenait-il ?... A la forêt qui l'a protégé... Oui... et à la terre qui l'a nourri... à l'air, à la lumière, à l'univers entier... ! ... Et puis, Sophie, elle appartient à d'autres... la table... à ceux qui ne sont pas encore nés et qui viendront après nous... ici même quand nous seront partis et quand nous serons morts." Un cercle après l'autre se forme, comme après le jet d'une pierre dans un étang. Et les yeux de Sophie aussi s'agrandissent, se dilatent. L'hommage aux origines. Ainsi commence tout processus d'humanisation. (p. 15-16

Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink.” -Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

In the traditional descriptions of the progress of meditation, beginning practice always involves coming to terms with the unwanted, unexplored, and disturbing aspects of our being. Although we try any number of supposedly therapeutic maneuvers, say the ancient Buddhist psychological texts, there is but one method of successfully working with such material—by wisely seeing it. As Suzuki Roshi, the first Zen master of the San Francisco Zen Center, put it in a talk entitled “Mind Weeds”: We say, “Pulling out the weeds we give nourishment to the plant.” We pull the weeds and bury them near the plant to give it nourishment. 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. So you should not be bothered by your mind. You should rather be grateful for the weeds, because eventually they will enrich your practice. If you have some experience of how the weeds in your mind change into mental nourishment, your practice will make remarkable progress. You will feel the progress. You will feel how they change into self-nourishment. . . . This is how we practice Zen.11

La vida es como subirse a un barco que está a punto de zarpar y hundirse en el océano. SHUNRYU SUZUKI ROSHI

The secret of Zen is just TWO words: not always so.

Life is like stepping into a boat that is about to sail out to sea and sink. —SHUNRYU SUZUKI ROSHI A

Suzuki Roshi gave the instructions, 'sit still. Don't anticipate...

abrevando en Aristóteles y otros pensadores, postula un modelo de bienestar compuesto por seis aspectos: Aceptación: ser positivos con respecto a nuestra propia persona, reconociendo nuestros mejores aspectos y nuestras cualidades menos beneficiosas, y sentirnos bien por ser tal como somos. Para adoptar esta actitud necesitamos una conciencia imparcial. Crecimiento: sentir que seguimos cambiando y desarrollando nuestro potencial, que mejoramos a medida que el tiempo pasa, adoptando nuevas maneras de comprender y de ser, y aprovechando al máximo nuestros talentos. “Cada uno de ustedes es perfecto tal como es”, dijo a sus discípulos el maestro zen Suzuki Roshi. Y al añadir: “Y pueden beneficiarse de pequeñas mejoras”, reconcilió la aceptación con el crecimiento. Autonomía: pensar y actuar con independencia, libres de la presión social, utilizando nuestros propios criterios para evaluarnos. Este principio es particularmente válido en culturas como las de Australia y los Estados Unidos, individualistas si se las compara con culturas como la japonesa, en la que predomina el valor de la armonía con los demás. Dominio: sentirse competente para manejar la complejidad de la vida, aprovechar las oportunidades que se presentan y crear situaciones que concuerden con nuestras necesidades y valores. Relaciones satisfactorias: establecer relaciones con afecto, empatía y confianza, junto con mutuo cuidado y una manera saludable de dar y recibir. Propósito de vida: definir metas y creencias que orientan y dan significado a nuestra vida. Algunos filósofos sostienen que la auténtica felicidad es producto de una vida con objetivos significativos.

As Suzuki Roshi said, “When you bow, there is no buddha and no you. One complete bow takes place. That is all. This is nirvana.

Zen is, in a nutshell, being on time. Not being early and not being late is Zen. When you are early, there is no self who is early. There is just being early. When you are late, there is no self who is late. There is just being late. When you are on time, there is no self who is on time. There is just being on time. This selfless practice of being on time is inseparable from great awakening. Once I asked Suzuki Roshi, “What is right effort?” He said, “To get up with no hesitation when your alarm clock rings.

Zen masters often die in a formal sitting posture or even standing. Suzuki Roshi’s way was to die reclining. He died during the first period of the meditation retreat known as rohatsu sesshin, which celebrates the enlightenment of Shakyamuni Buddha. He died upstairs as downstairs 132 people sat upright in the meditation hall. His life flowed into the practice of his students.

For the Zen practitioner, the bodhisattva precepts are not a side issue: they are at the core of the process of awakening. As Suzuki Roshi said, “Receiving the precepts is a way to help us understand what it means to just sit.” When you practice the precepts, meditation comes alive. This integration of precept practice and meditation practice, whether on your cushion, at the workplace, or in a relationship, is what I mean by “being upright.

What do we want to do? Who do we want to become? As Suzuki Roshi used to ask his students, “What is your heart’s inmost request?

All of you are perfect just as you are and you could use a little improvement. This Life Lesson is a direct quote from Shunryu Suzuki-roshi, a Sōtō Zen monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States14, and it serves as a guiding principle for continuous improvement in my life.

In the beginner’s mind, there are unlimited possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are few.

Here’s a famous quote from Japanese Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi: “All of you are perfect just as you are. And you could use a little improvement.” The second sentence sounds like a sly insult, but it’s actually an invitation into a deep self-love.

Suzuki Roshi once said that Zen was like walking in a fog:  it takes a while to get wet but eventually you are completely soaked.

Life is like stepping into a boat that is about to sail out to sea and sink.