When you separate the idea of time and space, you feel as if you have some choice, but actually, you have to do something, or you have to do not-doing. Not-to-do something is doing something. Good and bad are only in your mind. So we should not say, “This is good,” or “This is bad.” Instead of saying bad, you should say, “not-to-do”! If you think,

That everything is included within your mind is the essence of mind.

If you want to obtain perfect calmness in your zazen, you should not be bothered by the various images you find in your mind. Let them come, and let them go. Then they will be under control. But this policy is not so easy. It sounds easy, but it requires some special effort. How to make this kind of effort is the secret of practice.

Doing something is expressing our own nature. We do not exist for the sake of something else. We exist for the sake of ourselves.

Shobogenzo

when we become tired of our life we may say, “I shouldn’t have come to this place. It may have been much better to have gone to some other place for lunch. This place is not so good.” In your mind you create an idea of place separate from an actual time.

Zen mind is one of those enigmatic phrases used by Zen teachers to make you notice yourself, to go beyond the words and wonder what your own mind and being are. This is the purpose of all Zen teaching—to make you wonder and to answer that wondering with the deepest expression of your own nature.

The most important point is to own your own physical body. If you slump, you will lose your self. Your mind will be wandering about somewhere else; you will not be in your body.

When we become truly ourselves, we just become a swinging door, and we are purely independent of, and at the same time, dependent upon everything.