Wherever we go we recreate our shells (hells), like an insect carrying — Taisen Deshimaru

"You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair."

"You have to practice until you die."

"Train the body and develop stamina and endurance. But the spirit of competition and power that presides over them is not good, it reflects a distorted vision of life. The root of the martial arts is not there."

"Zen is not a particular state but the normal state: silent, peaceful, unagitated. In Zazen neither intention, analysis, specific effort nor imagination take place. Its enough just to be without hypocrisy, dogmatism, arrogance — embracing all opposites."

"Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance."

"Keep your hands open, and all the sands of the desert can pass through them. Close them, and all you can feel is a bit of grit."