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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.

— Taisen Deshimaru The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Buddhist Wisdom (2000)

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More quotes by Taisen Deshimaru

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

The Book of Positive Quotations (2007)

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.

Zen and the Art of Systems Analysis : Meditations on Computer Systems Development (2002)

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

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

Just Before Dark : Collected Nonfiction (1999)

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.

Zen to Go (1989)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Taisen Deshimaru (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.