This is self awareness! It surpasses all avenues of speech and thought…. You should know it yourself through inward examination.

It is written on the gate of heaven: / Nothing in existence is more / powerful than destiny. And destiny / brought you here, to this page, / which is part of your ticket—as all / things are—to return to God.

Your first task is to see the sorrow in you and around you; your next, to long intensely for liberation. The very intensity of longing will guide you; you need no other guide.

If we practice moderation or equilibrium, even in our most ordinary daily tasks, we shall see how steady will be our gain in concentration.

They must change often, who would be in constant happiness.

To me, that’s what art and poetry are: trying to be awake in a room of people who are committed to being awake, and who are being attentive without necessarily acting.

A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether.

I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.

It’s possible that is the main teaching of Zen, the main contribution that Zen makes to the Buddhist teaching. Don’t hold onto anything, especially the teaching, and especially the practice. Because the teaching that you can hold onto could never be the real teaching, because the teaching is really just life. Life as it really…

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green things which stands in the way. As a man is, so he sees.

As an ability, love is always there as a potential, ready to flourish and help our lives flourish.

When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; yes, and when I walk alone in the beautiful orchard, if my thoughts have been dwelling on extraneous incidents for some part of the time, for some other part I bring them back to the walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude,…

As any gardener will tell you, the cycles of nature require patience. You can’t just plant a seed and expect it to flower the next day. You can’t tug on the leaves or unfurl the bud to hurry the process. Even a fast growing vegetable like a radish requires time.

If you want to travel the Way of Buddhas and Zen masters, then expect nothing, seek nothing, and grasp nothing.

Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, So what. That’s one of my favorite things to say. So what.

we may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.

When there’s a will to fail, obstacles can be found.

Let any man examine his thoughts, and he will find them ever occupied with the past or the future. We scarcely think at all of the present; if we do, it is only to borrow the light which it gives, for regulating the future. The present is never our object; the past and the present…

If we envision ourselves as participants in the same grand, complex web of interactions as the forest, then planting acorns is like planting part of ourselves.

Suffering is necessary until you realize it isn’t.

A book is a mirror: If an ape looks into it, an apostle is hardly likely to look out. We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.

With breath there is always a beginning.

The secret of the receptive must be sought in stillness; Within stillness there remains the potential for action.

Water, birds, trees and forest, all repeat the Buddha’s name and proclaim the Law.

Humanity is part of the whole. To truly love the world is also to love human ingenuity and playfulness.

One things seems more and more evident to me now—people’s basic character does not change over the years…. Far from improving them, success usually accentuates their faults or short comings. The brilliant guys at school often turn out to be not so brilliant once they are out in the world. If you disliked or despised…

But being is making; not only large things, a family, a book, a business: but the shape we give this afternoon, a conversation between two friends, a meal.

Zazen is just like a bird flying in the vastness of the sky, like a fish swimming in pure water…. But if we are trying to find something we can depend on, zazen becomes a task, or a job, or a responsibility.

The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart, didn’t love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.

I’ve learned to value failed conversations, missed connections, confusions. What remains is what’s unsaid, what’s underneath. Understanding on another level of being.