Dōgen Quotes

We always attach ourselves to something that we think relatively better or more valuable than other things, and we are blinded to real life by that. We must purify our system of value. For living out our own life, we must first of all clarify absolute value. Many people live for fulfillment of their desires. These people are like chickens at a poultry farm. I feel sorry for the chickens that just eat nutritious feed day and night and lay as many eggs as possible. This is all that they do in their lives. Chicken raisers keep the light on in the chicken coop all night to keep the chickens producing eggs efficiently. They calculate how many eggs can be laid by one chicken, and they kill the chickens when they become old.

A billion worlds can be sat through within a single sitting.

Value the person you are right now, and the moments they are creating. Even if you become a Buddha in the future, you of the present will never be seen. It is just one time, one direction. If we think about it, what seems to be just an ordinary person's petty realm today is indeed very precious.

"I can only say that from ancient times, Buddhist practitioners have valued the zazen posture. I think zazen is a wonderful invention. Nuclear power, jet airplanes, skyscrapers, and many other products of modern civilization do not enable human beings to become noble. People living in modern civilization are doing precisely the same things as primitive people did. How to ennoble humanity is most important. I think zazen is a wonderful invention of the Indian people. Sawaki Roshi said, "When we just do zazen, we emanate a divine atmosphere.

Just study Buddhism. Don't follow the sentiments of the world.

You should stop searching for phrases and chasing after words. Take the backward step and turn the light inward. Your body-mind of itself will drop off and your original face will appear. If you want to attain just this, immediately practice just this.

Buddhas and Ancestors continuously maintain ocean mudra samadhi. While swimming in this samadhi, they expound, realize, practice.

"Giving" means nongreed. Nongreed means not to covet.

"The Tathagata, the World-Honored One, taught his disciples how to sit and said to them, "If you want to manifest samadhi and enter it, you should gather together all distracted thought and scattered mind within this posture. Practice in this way and you will manifest and intimately enter the king of samadhis."

Thus we clearly know that sitting in the meditation posture is itself the king of samadhis. It is itself entering realization."

Even when you are clearly correct and others are mistaken, it is harmful to argue and defeat them. On the other hand, if you admit fault when you are right, you are a coward. It is best to step back, neither trying to correct others nor conceding to mistaken views. If you don't react competitively, and let go of the conflict, others will also let go of it without harboring ill will. Above all, this is something you should keep in mind.

Because mountains are high and broad, the way of riding the clouds is always reached in the mountains; the inconceivable power of soaring in the wind comes freely from the mountains

Even if you hope to live for seventy or eighty years, in the end you are destined to die. You should regard your pleasures and sorrows, relationships, and attachments in worldly affairs as your enemy. To do so is the way to a fuller life. You should keep in mind the buddha way alone and work for the bliss of nirvana. Especially those of you who are elderly or who are middle-aged, how many years do you have left? How can you be lax in your practice of the way?

Know that to give to yourself is a part of giving.

Each moment of zazen is equally wholeness of practice, equally wholeness of realization. This is not only practice while sitting, it is like a hammer striking emptiness: before and after, its exquisite peal permeates everywhere. How can it be limited to this moment?

春は花
夏ほととぎす
秋は月
冬雪さえて
すずしかりけり