Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.

I’m struck by how laughter connects you with people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.

Clarity is of no importance because nobody listens and nobody knows what you mean no matter what you mean, nor how clearly you mean what you mean. But if you have vitality enough of knowing enough of what you mean, somebody and sometime and sometimes a great many will have to realize that you know…

What is a clock? Something agreed upon and arbitrarily imposed upon us. Standard time. Not true time. Symbolizing the whole standardization of our lives.

May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful.

The key word for our time is practice. We have all the light we need, we just need to put it into practice.

We find greater lightness and ease in our lives as we increasingly care for ourselves and other beings.

To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question.

When you rest in quietness and your image of yourself fades, and your image of the world fades, and your ideas of others fade, what’s left? A brightness, a radiant emptiness that is simply what you are.

Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.

The Tao is like water; it seeks the lowly level which men abhor.

He was obedient to and at one with nature and the four seasons.

Heaven and Earth give themselves. Air, water, plants, animals, and humans give themselves to each other. It is in this “giving themselves to each other” that we actually live. Whether you appreciate it or not, it is true.

A good deed doesn’t just evaporate and disappear. Its consequences saturate the universe, and the goodness that happens somewhere, anywhere, helps in the transfiguration of the ugliness.

After all, if I can’t be myself, who can?

Don’t think, but look!

God exists, since mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exists, since we cannot prove it.

Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.

No one ever goes into battle thinking God is on the other side.

Only useless things are indispensable.

Live by the light of your own heart… but make sure this heart is silent and empty.

Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

Do not be carried away by anything outward or conventional. Zen must be seized with bare hands, with no gloves on.

It’s not denial. I’m just very selective about the reality I accept.

When we live superficially, when we are always outside ourselves, never quite “with” ourselves, always divided and pulled in many directions, … we find ourselves doing many things we do not really want to do, saying things we do not really mean, needing things we do not really need, exhausting ourselves for what we secretly…

Time comes to us softly, slowly. It sits beside us for a while. Then, long before we are ready, it moves on.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

When the wise man hears of the Tao, he puts it into practice…. When the fool hears of it, he laughs at it. / Indeed, it would not be worth to be called Tao if he did not laugh at it.

Be kinder to yourself. And then let your kindness flood the world.