What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

Be sure of the fact before you lose time in searching for a cause.

Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact.

God loves all the flowers, even the wild ones that grow on the side of the highway.

You must be a diligent person with a humble heart. Have compassion for everyone. Even your enemies.

Deep in their roots, / All flowers keep the light.

We’re all stuck on this often miserable earth where life is essentially tragic, but there are glints of beauty and bedrock joy that come shining through from time to precious time to remind anybody who cares to see that there is something higher and larger than ourselves. And I am not talking about your putrefying…

Sometimes, everyone is right. Not always and not even usually, but once in a while…

One of the best means for arousing the wish to work on yourself is to realize that you may die at any moment. But first you must learn how to keep it in mind.

The thing about Zen is that it pushes contradictions to their ultimate limit where one has to choose between madness and innocence. And Zen suggests that we might be driving toward one or the other on a cosmic scale. Driving toward them because, one way or the other, as madmen or innocents, we are already…

When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

This is the hard work of life in the world, to acknowledge within yourself the introvert, the clown, the artist, the homebody, the goofball, the thinker. Look inside. That way lies dancing to the melodies spun out by your own heart.

Lesson One: I give up.

Take care of yourself right now. Befriend what’s happening, not just who you’re supposed to be or what the world should be like.

The value of human life lies in the fat of suffering, for where there is no suffering, no consciousness of karmic bondage, there will be no power of attaining spiritual experience. Unless we agree to suffer we cannot be free from suffering.

In these countless stars, in their clusters and colors and constellations, in the “shooting” showers of blazing dust and ice, we have always found beauty. And in this beauty, the overwhelming size of the universe has seemed less ominous, Earth’s own beauty more incredible. If indeed the numbers and distances of the night sky are…

He who dares not offend cannot be honest.

A certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. 

We come to see that not knowing is a perfectly valid, honorable, and authentic place to be , and not in need of transformation. It is a pure expression of transformation, in and of itself, exactly as it is.

Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers in love. But always meeting ourselves.

History is important. If you don’t know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it.

What one needs to do at every moment of one’s life is to put an end to the old world and to begin a new world.

Let each one turn his gaze inward and regard himself with awe and wonder, with mystery and reverence; … let each one work his own influence, his own havoc, his own miracles.

Let us ever remember that true gratitude and appreciation shows itself neither in independence nor satisfaction but passes the gift joyfully on in larger and better form.

And love is the hand that takes the curtain down, a stronger hand than fear, which hung it up. For all the ill that is in us comes from fear, and all the good from love.

Miracles are instantaneous, they cannot be summoned, but come of themselves, usually at unlikely moments and to those who least expect them.

In this world of onrushing events the act of meditation—even just a “one breath” meditation—straightening the back, clearing the mind for a moment—is a refreshing island in the stream…. Meditation is not just a rest or retreat from the turmoil of the stream or the impurity of the world. It is a way of being the…

Illusion immediately becomes more workable when we acknowledge it simply as an illusion. The Western habit is to work against the grain and to try and organize the illusory into something solid and structured…. In the stressful attempt to nail down the illusory nature of things, our chance to be at ease, spacious, awake, and…

Silence is unceasing eloquence. It is the best language.

Life’s outcomes, while not entirely random, have a huge amount of luck baked into them. Above all, recognize that if you have had success, you have also had luck—and with luck comes obligation. You owe a debt, and not just to your Gods. You owe a debt to the unlucky.