Dogen Zenji Quotes

Many spiritual teachers - in Buddhism, in Islam - have talked about first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom, to enlightenment.

Zazen is the ultimate practice. This is indeed the True Self. The Buddhadharma is not to be sought outside of this.

By growing a spiritual practice, we are given all that we need.

Know this also to be one of the spiritual practices, a discipline for God - realisation. Its aim also is Self - realisation.

So it is not a matter of whether it is possible to attain Buddhahood, or if it is possible to make a tile a jewel. But just to work, just to live in this world with this understanding is the most important point, and that is our practice. That is true zazen.

All sentient beings have the seed of the Buddha within them.

Self is the opaque veil that hides the Face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction.

Built on the foundation of concentration is the third aspect of the Buddha’s path of awakening: clarity of vision and the development of wisdom.

You know that you have fully experienced love when you turn into love - that is the spiritual goal of life.

I make no distinction between the mind and the spirit, and therefore no distinction between the process of achieving spiritual growth and achieving mental growth. They are one and the same.

A primary goal of the spiritual life is to learn to quiet the mind through prayer and meditation, through spiritual practice, so that we can hear what in both Judaism and Christianity, is called the small, still voice within.

The greatest help to spiritual life is meditation. In meditation we divest ourselves of all material conditions and feel our divine nature. We do not depend upon any external help in meditation. The touch of the soul can paint the brightest color even in the dingiest places; it can cast a fragrance over the vilest thing; it can make the wicked divine-and all enmity, all selfishness is effaced.

Buddhism itself is all about empowering yourself, not about getting what you want.

The spiritual journey does not consist of arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have, or becomes what he is not. It consists in the dissipation of one's own ignorance concerning oneself and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins the spiritual awakening. The finding of God is a coming to one?s self.

Maybe, just maybe, I would like to become a real spiritual teacher, a working lama!

When you get to a higher level of consciousness, though, when you get into a spiritual approach to life, you are not trying to get someplace else...

Man is to become divine by realizing the divine. Idols or temples, or churches or books, are only the supports, the help of his spiritual childhood.

Karma is your survival and your bondage. And if you handle it right, it can also be your liberation.

We never become truly spiritual by sitting down and wishing to become so. You must undertake something so great that you cannot accomplish it unaided.

If we seek the Buddha outside the mind, the Buddha changes into a devil.

The phrase, 'You must die before you die,' is found in most of the world religions. If you don't learn how to die early, you spend the rest of your life avoiding failure. When you can free your True Self, the whole spiritual life opens up.

This is the greatest stumbling block in our spiritual discipline, which, in actuality, consists not in getting rid of the self but in realizing the fact that there is no such existence from the first.

The nature of spiritual awakening is frequently misunderstood. The adoption of spiritual beliefs, seeing visions of God or celestial beings, the ability to channel, to heal, to foretell the future, or other paranormal powers - all such phenomena are of value and are not to be dismissed, but none of them is in itself indicative of spiritual awakening in a person who experiences them.

Unless you see your nature, all this talk about cause & effect is nonsense. Buddhas don't practice nonsense.

Meditation is a way of moving into the unlimited dimension of who you are - it is the ultimate freedom.