“If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind there are few.”
"Someone was sitting in front of a sunflower, watching the sunflower, a cup of sun, and so I tried it too. It was wonderful; I felt the whole universe in the sunflower. That was my experience. Sunflower meditation. A wonderful confidence appeared. You can see the whole universe in a flower."
- Shunryu Suzuki
Mindfulness
"Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine."
- Shunryu Suzuki
Mindfulness
"After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falling from the waterfall is separated by the wind and rocks, then we have feeling. You have difficulty because you have feeling. You attach to the feeling you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created."
- Shunryu Suzuki
Philosophy
"After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falling from the waterfall is separated by the wind and rocks, then we have feelings. You have difficulty because you have feelings. You attach to the feeling you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created. When you do not realize that you are one with the river or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same things. When we realize this fact we have no fear of death anymore, and we have no actual difficulty in our life."
- Shunryu Suzuki
Spirituality
"The expert in anything was once a beginner."
- Helen Hayes
Learning
"Learn as if you will live forever, live like you will die tomorrow."
- Mahatma Gandhi
Learning
"To know how much there is to know is the beginning of learning to live."
- Dorothy West
Learning
"In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind, there are few."
- Vince Gironda
Learning
"I am always doing what I cannot do yet in order to learn how to do it."
- Vincent van Gogh
Learning