After you have practiced for a while, you will realize that it is not possible to make rapid, extraordinary progress. Even though you try very hard, the progress you make is always little by little. It is not like going out in a shower in which you know when you get wet. In a fog, you do not know you are getting wet, but as you keep walking you get wet little by little. If your mind has ideas of progress, you may say, “Oh, this pace is terrible!” But actually it is not. When you get wet in a fog it is very difficult to dry yourself. So there is no need to worry about progress.

Shunryu Suzuki

from the book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

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

• 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
• Just to live
• Belief based on a self-centered idea
• Open to all the possibilities
• Beginner’s mind
• Spacious control