Enhance Your Quote Experience
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.
“ ”The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities.
About Shunryu Suzuki
Shunryu Suzuki (鈴木 俊隆 Suzuki Shunryū, dharma name Shogaku Shunryu) (18 May 1904 – 4 December 1971) was a Sōtō Zen monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States, and is renowned for founding the first Zen Buddhist monastery outside Asia (Tassajara Zen Mountain Center). Suzuki founded San Francisco Zen Center which, along with its affiliate temples, comprises one of the most influential Zen organizations in the United States. A book of his teachings, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, is one of the most popular books on Zen and Buddhism in the West.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Additional quotes by Shunryu Suzuki
When you do something, if you fix your mind on the activity with some confidence, the quality of your state of mind is the activity itself. When you are concentrated on the quality of your being, you are prepared to the activity.
It is when your practice is rather greedy that you become discouraged with it. So you should be grateful that you have a sign or warning signal to show you the weak point in your practice.
We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence. The basic teaching of Buddhism is the teaching of transiency, change. That everything changes is the basic truth of each existence. When we realize the everlasting truth of “everything changes” and find our composure in it, we find ourselves in Nirvana.