Our real journey in life is interior.

Where are we really going? Always home.

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.

Man can do what he wants but he cannot want what he wants.

There is a good deal more to Nothing than meets the eye.

Leonardo’s Mona Lisa is just a thousand thousand smears of paint. Michelangelo’s David is just a million hits with a hammer. We’re all of us a million bits put together the right way.

I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.

You can’t be what you can’t see.

It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.

Man is free at the instant he wants to be.

We stand in relation to the past very much like the cow in the meadow—endlessly chewing the cud. It is not something finished and done with, as we sometimes fondly imagine, but something alive, constantly changing, and perpetually with us. But the future too is with us perpetually, and alive and constantly changing.

For myself, I like a universe that includes much that is unknown and, at the same time, much that is knowable. A universe in which everything is known would be static and dull, as boring as the heaven of some weak minded theologians. A universe that is unknowable is no fit place for a thinking…

I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.

Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.

The more you know about another person’s story, the less possible it is to see that person as your enemy.

Laugher is wine for the soul—laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness. Comedy and tragedy step through life together, arm in arm… once we can laugh, we can live…. It is the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.

If there is to be a future, it will wear the crown of feminine design.

The human body is not what it appears to be: a limited, mobile digestive tube. We only need to relax or meditate to discover that this popular materialistic stereotype is untrue, for it is then that we begin to discover the energy dimension of the body and the “deep space of consciousness.”

In zazen, leave your front door and your back door open. Let thoughts come and go. Just don’t serve them tea.

I regard myself as a soldier, though a soldier of peace.

You must fight others, but through peace, and through dialogue, and through education.

For one who is moderate in food and diversion, whose actions are disciplined, who is moderate in sleep and waking, yoga destroys all sorrows.

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.

Your trials did not come to punish you, but to awaken you—to make you realize that you are part of Spirit and that just behind the spark of your life is the flame of infinity.

The fires of suffering become the light of consciousness.

Perennial joy or passing pleasure? This is the choice one is to make always. Those who are wise recognize this, but not the ignorant.

Sometimes people get the mistaken notion that spirituality is a separate department of life, the penthouse of existence. But rightly understood, it is a vital awareness that pervades all realms of our being… Wherever we may come alive, that is the area in which we are spiritual.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.

If you learn to use a perfect afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned the meaning of life.

No matter what, expect the unexpected. And whenever possible, BE the unexpected.