f you want to obtain perfect calmness in your zazen [meditation], you should not be bothered by the various images you find in your mind. Let them come, and let them go. Then they will be under control. But this policy is not so easy. It sounds easy, but it requires some special effort. How to make this kind of effort is the secret of practice. Suppose you are sitting under some extraordinary circumstances. If you try to calm your mind you will be unable to sit, and if you try not to be disturbed, your effort will not be the right effort. The only effort that will help you is to count your breathing, or to concentrate on your inhaling and exhaling. We say concentration, but to concentrate your mind on something is not the true purpose of Zen. The true purpose is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes. This is to put everything under control in its widest sense. Zen practice is to open up our small mind. So concentrating is just an aid to help you realize “big mind,” or the mind that is everything.

Shunryu Suzuki

from the book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Read a random quote or see all quotes by Shunryu Suzuki.

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