Dōgen Quotes

• “If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?”

  Dōgen

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• “Do not be concerned with the faults of other persons. Do not see others' faults with a hateful mind. There is an old saying that if you stop seeing others' faults, then naturally seniors and venerated and juniors are revered. Do not imitate others' faults; just cultivate virtue. Buddha prohibited unwholesome actions, but did not tell us to hate those who practice unwholesome actions.”

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• “A fool sees himself as another, but a wise man sees others as himself.”

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• “To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.”

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• “Forgetting oneself is opening oneself”

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• “Prefer to be defeated in the presence of the wise than to excel among fools.”

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• “Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed, do not squander your life.”

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• “No matter how bad a state of mind you may get into, if you keep strong and hold out, eventually the floating clouds must vanish and the withering wind must cease.”

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• “If you want to travel the Way of Buddhas and Zen masters, then expect nothing, seek nothing, and grasp nothing.”

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• “When you paint Spring, do not paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots, but just paint Spring. To paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots is to paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots - it is not yet painting Spring.”

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• “There is a simple way to become buddha: When you refrain from unwholesome actions, are not attached to birth and death, and are compassionate toward all sentient beings, respectful to seniors and kind to juniors, not excluding or desiring anything, with no designing thoughts or worries, you will be called a buddha. Do not seek anything else.”

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• “To escape from the world means that one's mind is not concerned with the opinions of the world.”

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• “When you ride in a boat and watch the shore, you might assume that the shore is moving. But when you keep your eyes closely on the boat, you can see that the boat moves. Similarly, if you examine many things with a confused mind, you might suppose that your mind and nature are permanent. But when you practice intimately and return to where you are, it will be clear that there is nothing that has unchanging self.”

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• “It's too late to be ready.”

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• “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')”

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• “do not view mountains from the scale of human thought”

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• “Nothing can be gained by extensive study and wide reading. Give them up immediately.”

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• “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.”

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

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• “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.”

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

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• “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.”

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• “One must be deeply aware of the impermanence of the world.”

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• “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.”

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• “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.”

  Dōgen

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