Dogen Zenji Quotes

But deluded people don't realize that their own mind is the Buddha. They keep searching outside.

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

As long as you look for a Buddha somewhere else, you'll never see that your own mind is the Buddha.

The mind is the Buddha, and the Buddha is the mind.

Your nature is the Buddha.

The one who can dissolve her mind will suddenly discover the Tao at her feet.

To find a Buddha all you have to do is see your nature.

We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself.

Go to the truth beyond the mind. Love is the bridge.

Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind.

The mind is the world and the no-mind is freedom from the world. The mind is misery and no-mind is the end of misery and the beginning of ecstasy.

Meditation will drop all the masks. It is a search for the original face.

How can one become enlightened? One can, because one is enlightened - one just has to recognize the fact.

So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger. One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.

Spirituality: the last refuge of a failed human. Just another way of distracting yourself from who you really are.

Through meditative techniques, one can free the mind of delusions and attain what we call enlightenment.

This is the pathless path - returning to where you were initially before you got lost. The deepest truth in you is where the journey leads - shedding, like taking off layers of an onion, until you come to your essence. The key to the spiritual journey is not acquiring something outside of yourself. Rather it is shedding the veils to come back to the deepest truth of your being.

Those who practice know whether realization is attained or not, just as those who drink water know whether it is hot or cold

Man is almost mad-mad because he is seeking something which he has already got; mad because he's not aware of who he is; mad because he hopes, desires and then ultimately, feels frustrated. Frustration is bound to be there because you cannot find yourself by seeking; you are already there. The seeking has to stop, the search has to drop.

In this very breath that we take now lies the secret that all great teachers try to tell us.

To study the Way is to study the Self. To study the Self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe. To be enlightened by all things of the universe is to cast off the body and mind of the self as well as those of others. Even the traces of enlightenment are wiped out, and life with traceless enlightenment goes on forever and ever

You can't make a date with enlightenment.

You've been somebody long enough. You spent the first half of your life becoming somebody. Now you can work on becoming nobody, which is really somebody. For when you become nobody there is no tension, no pretense, no one trying to be anyone or anything. The natural state of the mind shines through unobstructed - and the natural state of the mind is pure love.

Meditation is the eye that sees the Truth, the heart that feels the Truth and the soul that realises the Truth.

You should stop searching for phrases and chasing after words. Take the backward step and turn the light inward. Your body-mind of itself will drop off and your original face will appear. If you want to attain just this, immediately practice just this.