If enlightenment comes first, before thinking, before practice, your thinking and your practice will not be self-centered. By enlightenment I mean believing in nothing, believing in something which has no form or no color, which is ready to take form or color. This enlightenment is the immutable truth. It is on this original truth that our activity, our thinking, and our practice should be based.

Shunryu Suzuki

from the book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

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Further quotes from the book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind:

• Little by little
• Just to live
• Belief based on a self-centered idea
• Open to all the possibilities
• Your last moment
• The posture itself
• The quality of zazen will express itself
• Wisdom seeking wisdom
• Calmness in activity
• Empty and ready mind
• The teaching of transiency
• Opening up our small mind
• The awareness that you are here
• Weed
• Nothing outside yourself can cause any trouble
• Accepting change
• Do not be bothered by anything
• The weeds you have in your mind
• Beginner’s mind
• Spacious control