Taisen Deshimaru

"Keep your hands open, and all the sands of the desert can pass through them. Close them, and all you can feel is a bit of grit."

"Train the body and develop stamina and endurance. But the spirit of competition and power that presides over them is not good, it reflects a distorted vision of life. The root of the martial arts is not there."

"You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair."

"You have to practice until you die."

"Zen is not a particular state but the normal state: silent, peaceful, unagitated. In Zazen neither intention, analysis, specific effort nor imagination take place. It's enough just to be without hypocrisy, dogmatism, arrogance — embracing all opposites."

"If you have a glass full of liquid you can discourse forever on its qualities, discuss whether it is cold, warm, whether it is really and truly composed of H-2-O, or even mineral water, or saki. Meditation is Drinking it!"

"Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance."

"We feel our shell keeps us safe, but it crushes us and others, and keeps out light and sun."

"You must not take out your sword because if you try to kill someone, you must die for it yourself. What you must do instead is kill yourself, kill your own mind."

"You are the strongest and the others keep their distance. It is no longer necessary to win victories over them."

"To receive everything, one must open one's hands and give."

"If you are not happy here and now, you never will be."

"Think with your whole body."

"We should learn to think with our fingers."

"Religions remain what they are. Zen is meditation. Meditation is the foundation of every religion. People today feel an intense need to go back to the source of religious life, to the pure essence in the depths of themselves which they can discover only through actually experiencing it. They also need to be able to concentrate their minds in order to find the highest wisdom and freedom, which is spiritual in nature, in their efforts to deal with the influences of every description imposed upon them by their environment. Human wisdom alone is not enough, it is not complete. Only universal truth can provide the highest wisdom. Take away the word Zen and put Truth or Order of the Universe in its place."