Philosophy will clip an angel’s wings.

There’s nothing in this world I dislike.

This deepest form of prayer is really just the willingness to be still and let the longing in your heart go out without defining or understanding where it is going.

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you’re no longer thinking ahead, each footstep…

When you arise in the morning think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love.

Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need.

Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what’s more than enough.

Money, if it does not bring you happiness, will at least help you be miserable in comfort.

If you want to become whole, / let yourself be partial. / If you want to become straight, / let yourself be crooked. / If you want to become full, / let yourself be empty.

Seeing isn’t what we think it is. What we call seeing is “looking.” Looking is when you go out and you look at something. You have a number of facts about that thing and you put them together as a mental construct. … When students in my class look at the model often they are…

We wouldn’t need books quite so much if everyone around us understood us well. But they don’t.

We are fragmented into many different aspects. We don’t know who we really are, or what aspects of ourselves we should identify with or believe in. So many contradictory voices, dictates, and feelings fight for control over our inner lives that we find ourselves scattered everywhere, in all directions, leaving nobody at home. / Meditation,…

If we’re not supposed to dance, / Why all this music?

Zen masters tell us that the answer is in the question itself, you look into your question itself. My answer only leads you farther away from the question. / Who are you to ask that question.

Physicists are made of atoms. A physicist is an attempt by an atom to understand itself.

Separated by a million eons, yet not apart for a single instant, all day long sitting face to face, yet never meeting for a moment.

Words are events, they do things, change things.

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.

The man who in his work finds silence, and who sees that silence is work, this man in truth sees the light and in all his works finds peace.

As long as we have practiced neither concentration nor mindfulness, the ego takes itself for granted and remains its usual normal size, as big as the people around one will allow.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.

You must unlearn the habit of being someone else or nothing at all, of imitating the voices of others and mistaking the faces of others for your own.

Never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television.

The word buddha … simply means “awake” or “awakened.” It does not refer to a particular historical person or to a philosophy or religion. It refers to your own mind. You know you have a mind, but what’s it like? It’s awake. I don’t just mean “not asleep.” I mean your mind is really awake, beyond your…

I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.

Living gratefully begins with affirming the good and recognizing its sources.

May my heart always be open to little birds who are the secret of living.

Words—so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

You see, only defeat forces things to change. / When losing, we feel reborn and we find the guts to live again by performing the same mistakes under new forms. / On the contrary, victory humiliates human sentiment and hopelessly sends people to celebrate along with wine and prostitutes.

In life one rarely knows which remarks of the hundreds uttered in the course of a day will turn out to be auspicious.