Dogen Zenji Quotes

You ask 'Are you a man or a demon?' Neither, I say. I have woken up, and the rest of you are sleeping, and that is the only difference between us.

When one speaks of awakening, it means de-hypnotizatio n; coming to your senses. But of course to do that, you have to go out of your mind.

Not creating delusions is enlightenment.

I've been on a quest for spiritual answers for a long time. The things I've learned about interconnectedness and non-duality and the feeling of tapping into your soul that goes beyond the edge of your skin is important to me. Once I learned that, I'm far less often trapped in my own little man problems. Me against the universe problems.

By constantly keep one's attention on the Source, the ego is dissolved in that Source like a salt-doll in the sea.

To be conscious of Being, you need to reclaim consciousness from the mind. This is one of the most essential tasks on your spiritual journey.

Spiritual Awakening is awakening from the dream of thought.

I have come not to teach but to awaken.

You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since you are awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it. All that you have to do is to give up being aware of other things, that is of the not-Self. If one gives up being aware of them then pure awareness alone remains, and that is the Self.

Man ordinarily is a robot. He lives apparently awake, but not really. He walks, he talks, he acts, but it is all as if in sleep - not conscious of what he is doing, not conscious of what he is saying, not conscious of all that surrounds him. He moves surrounded in a dark cloud of unawareness. According to Gautama the Buddha, this is the original sin: to live unconsciously, to act out of unconsciousness. In fact, the word 'sin' comes from a root which means forgetfulness. Sin simply means that we are not conscious, aware, alert, that we don't have any inner light to guide us.

Enlightenment or awakening is not the creation of a new state of affairs but the recognition of what already is.

It's you who are telling me; opening my eyes to things I'd looked at so long that I'd ceased to see them.

Turn the mind inward and cease thinking of yourself as the body; thereby you will come to know that the self is ever happy. Neither grief nor misery is experienced in this state.

Rather, Spirit, and enlightement, has to be something that you are fully aware of right now. Something you are already looking at right now... We are all already looking directly at Spirit, we just don't recognize it. We have all the necessary cognition, but not the recognition.

Someone once told me that the finer points of devotion are about the size of a pinhole, and there are millions of them. And if you could connect each dot, then you’ve got a diagram of what you think you thought you knew, and if you’re willing to admit that you know nothing…you have the blueprint for a breakthrough.

It's just a constant thing when the mind starts to wake up to itself.

Satori - in the awakening from a dream. Awakening and self-realization and seeing into one's own being - these are synonymous.

True progress comes not through action, but through awakening.

Those who practice know whether realization is attained or not, just as those who drink water know whether it is hot or cold

Regain your senses, call yourself back, and once again wake up. Now that you realize that only dreams were troubling you, view this 'reality' as you view your dreams.

The only mistake that we can make as human beings is to be asleep, unaware of ourselves.

But people of the deepest understanding look within, distracted by nothing. Since a clear mind is the Buddha, they attain the understanding of a Buddha without using the mind.

Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed.

This is the greatest stumbling block in our spiritual discipline, which, in actuality, consists not in getting rid of the self but in realizing the fact that there is no such existence from the first.

When we're deluded there's a world to escape. When we're aware, there's nothing to escape.