When the old plum tree suddenly blooms, the world of blossoming flowers arises. At the moment when the world of blossoming flowers arises, spring arrives. There is a single blossom that opens five petals. At this moment of a single blossom, there are three, four, and five blossoms, hundreds, thousands, myriads, billions of blossoms – countless blossoms.

Dogen Zenji

from the book The Essential Dogen: Writings of the Great Zen Master

translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi


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Further quotes from the book The Essential Dogen:

• What is sitting
• Undivided activity
• Beneficial action is an act of oneness
• Since this word is already expounded
• Enlightenment poem