Meditation is very simple. It means to surrender the mind, the body, and the world, from moment to moment, to the silent presence in which they appear. That’s all.

The secret of transformation is in the way we handle this very moment.

If you sit on the bank of a river, you see only a small part of its surface. And yet, the water before your eyes is proof of unknowable depths.

The mere fact that another had walked where I was walking made the path easier for my feet.

Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.

Each time dawn appears, the mystery is there in its entirety.

Discovering the selfness nature doesn’t have a monumental “Eureka!” quality. It is more like being continually perplexed, the way we feel when we’re looking for the car keys we’re so sure are in our pocket. That experience of being somewhat dumbfounded is the beginning of wisdom. We look at our mind and see that it…

If you haven’t found something strange during the day, it hasn’t been much of a day.

The good thing about being a hypocrite is you get to keep your values.

This is a pleasant surprise, Archie. I would not have believed it. That of course is the advantage of being a pessimist; a pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.

We can be grateful for what we have while also demanding what we deserve.

If I could only give three words of advice, they would be, “Tell the truth.” If I got three more words, I’d add: “All the time.”

I don’t like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work—the chance to find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself not for others—what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.

Don’t play what there, play what’s not there.

I suspect that the most basic and powerful way to connect with another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention.

Kindness is not accompanied by a separable stream of positive emotion like joy; rather, it consists in total engagement and in the loss of self consciousness. Time stops.

Look to yourself for the permanent. Dive deep within and find out what is real in you.

One single gift acknowledged in gratefulness has the power to dissolve the ties of our alienation.

We must shift our allegiances from fear to curiosity, from attachment to letting go, from control to trust, and from entitlement to humility.

Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall; it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away…

It is far too easy to discourage, all too easy to criticize, to complain, to rebuke. Let us try instead to see even a small amount of good in a person and concentrate on that. Let us be quicker to praise than to find fault. Let us be quicker to thank others than to complain.

Building contentment with boredom, sadness, impatience, depression, disappointment, and loss builds our ability to be that tall tree so rooted in the earth that great winds cannot topple it. Being content with our contentment is itself a gateway to the calm depths within.

For action to be compassionate, we need to eliminate the idea of object, we need to be here together doing exactly what needs to be done to relieve pain and suffering in the simplest way we can. We need to listen.

The journey is part of the experience—an expression of the seriousness of one’s intent. One doesn’t take the A train to Mecca.

There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes, and those who do not. Both classes are extremely unpleasant to meet socially, leaving practically no one in the world whom one cares very much to know.

Paradoxical as it may seem, the purposeful life has no content, no point. It hurries on and on, and misses everything. Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing, for it is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world.

At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don’t need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens—that letting go—you let go because you can.

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness.

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.