The trick is not how much pain you feel—but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.

The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.

I always go back to my grandmother’s advice to me… the first time I fell and hurt myself. And she said to me, “Honey, at least falling on your face is a forward movement.”

Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow cycles of nature, is a help.

Don’t let other people tell you what you want.

This is what we are: a collection of stories that we share, in common. This is what we are to each other.

The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.

Grace happens when we act with others on behalf of our world.

Truth walks toward us on the paths of our questions.

Buddhist meditation, but above all that of Zen, seeks not to explain but to pay attention, to become aware, to be mindful, in other words to develop a certain kind of consciousness that is above and beyond deception by verbal formulas—or by emotional excitement.

Say this is a stick and I will beat you with it! Say this is not a stick and I will beat you with it! No, what will you say?

Everyone is born a poet, a person discovering the way words sound and work, caring and delighting in words. I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is: Why did other people stop?

The things you do not have to say make you rich. Saying things you do not have to say weakens your talk. Hearing things you do not need to hear dulls your hearing. And things you know before you hear them—those are you, those are why you are in the world.

I like to live in the sound of water, in the feel of the mountain air. A sharp reminder hits me: this world is still alive; it stretches out there shivering toward its own creation, and I’m part of it. Even my breathing enters into this elaborate give and take, this bowing to sun and…

Nothing can save you now because you have only this moment. Not even enlightenment will help you now because there are no other moments.

I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God.

Dignity is the state of a man who is well prepared and who is not troubled by the actions of others. It does not change according to the outside situation.

Anything that is built must rest on a foundation.

If you feel trapped it is through your mind. If you feel free it is through your mind. Don’t give it to your mind to assess how good the day has been. Just be present.

The gift of learning to meditate is the greatest gift you can give yourself in this lifetime.

You have woken up late, lost and perplexed but don’t rush to your books looking for knowledge. Pick up a flute instead and let your heart play.

All knowledge, all powers, everything is within. Your destiny is within, your future is within, the ultimate is within.

When we know how to listen deeply and how to breathe deeply in mindfulness, everything becomes clear and deep.

Possess nothing, enjoy everything.

The world is violent and mercurial—it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love—love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and…

At Ryoanji in Kyoto there is a famous rock garden; wherever in it a person stands, one of the fifteen rocks cannot be seen. The garden reminds that always something unknowable is present, just beyond what can be perceived or comprehended—and that something is as much part of the real as any other stone amid…

Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul…. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.

It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity.

Master your emotions and control your senses, both in private and in public.

Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely will find peace.