In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.

Reality is a staircase going neither up nor down. We don’t move, today is today, always is today.

All you can write is what you see.

The human desire to be understood is never quite sincere. It is on our own terms that we desire to be understood, not on the terms of truth.

Strength is the capacity to break a Hershey bar into four pieces with your bare hands—and then eat just one of the pieces.

Real faith means holding ourselves open to the unconditional mystery which we encounter in every sphere of our life which cannot be compressed into any formula.

A monk came to Master Joshu and asked: “Who is Buddha?” / Instantly Joshu replied: “Who are you?”

The thing that’s important to know is that you never know. You’re always sort of feeling your way.

Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon. How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.

No matter how much we like or dislike, or are hurt or maimed by a thought, action, or event, our attitudes do not color the event itself, only our relationship to it. As this is so, no matter how much we stomp or shout or cajole or whine, reality is what it is. In this…

We all have an old knot in the heart we wish to untie.

You give into distraction as if it is a murderer. You lay there, waiting to be killed. Today: fight for your life.

I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite—only a sense of existence.

A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self awareness, inner energies wake up and work miracles without effort on your…

If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family.

Anyone who thinks the pen is mightier than the sword has not been stabbed with both.

The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.

Men never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when they do it out of conscience.

We think hitting the ground is a mistake, but the ground we hit, the failure we experience is not a mistake. The world is endlessly mysterious, experience is profound…. But it is never a mistake. To foster even a meager appreciation of that is to begin to practice. It is the decision to stop complaining…

There is never a later, but for most of my life I have believed in later.

There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.

I would like to do whatever it is that presses the essence from the hour.

I hope nothing. I fear nothing. I am free. Nikos

If we don’t change the direction we are headed, we will end up where we are going.

The quieter you become the more you can hear.

I shall live because there are a few people I want to stay with for the longest possible time and because I have duties to discharge. It is not my concern whether or not life has meaning.

While I am busy with little things, I am not required to do greater things.

All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.

I would like to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.

Modern society seems to me a celebration of all the things that lead away from the truth, make truth hard to live for, and discourage people from even believing that it exists. And to think that all this springs from a civilization that claims to adore life, but actually starves it of any real meaning;…