Dōgen Quotes

Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.

Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment. (From 'Fukan zazengi')

It's too late to be ready.

do not view mountains from the scale of human thought

To enter the Buddha Way is to stop discriminating between good and evil and to cast aside the mind that says this is good and that is bad.

If you study a lot because you are worried that others will think badly of you for being ignorant and you'll feel stupid, this is a serious mistake.

Treading along in this dreamlike, illusory realm,
Without looking for the traces I may have left;
A cuckoo's song beckons me to return home;
Hearing this, I tilt my head to see
Who has told me to turn back;

But do not ask me where I am going,
As I travel in this limitless world,
Where every step I take is my home.

In a snowfall that covers the winter grass a white heron uses his own whiteness to disappear.

Every man possesses the Buddha-nature. Do not demean yourselves.

What you think in your own mind to be good, or what people of the world think is good, is not necessarily good.

Each moment is all being, each moment is the entire world. Reflect now whether any being or any world is left out of the present moment.

The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the Dharma gate of repose and bliss, the practice-realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the manifestation of ultimate reality. Traps and snares can never reach it. Once its heart is grasped, you are like the dragon when he gains the water, like the tiger when she enters the mountain. For you must know that just there (in zazen) the right Dharma is manifesting itself and that, from the first, dullness and distraction are struck aside.

Only those who have the great capacity of genuine trust can enter this realm [the realm of the buddhas]. Those who have no trust are unable to accept it, however much they hear it.

Although we say mountains belong to the country, actually, they belong to those that love them.

Know that the true dharma emerges of itself [during the practice of zazen], clearing away hindrances and distractions.