The central benefit of Zen, in the context of the ordinary ups and downs of life, is not in preventing the minus and promoting the plus but in realizing the fundamental reality that is not under the sway of ups and downs.

Musō Soseki (1275 CE-1351 CE), Musō Soseki was a Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk and teacher, and a calligraphist, poet and garden designer. The most famous monk of his time, he is also known as Musō Kokushi (夢窓国師) ("national Zen teacher"), an honorific conferred on him by Emperor Go-Daigo.