When we attempt to exercise power or control over someone else, we cannot avoid giving that person the very same power or control over us.

Zen proposes its solution by directly appealing to facts of personal experience and not to book-knowledge.

The whole path of mindfulness is about letting go. We let go of our attachment to our views, our attachment to our opinions, our attachment to our ideas.

The things that matter most in our lives are not fantastic or grand. They are the moments when we touch one another.

The person who clings to nothing of the past, present and future, who has no attachment and no aversion, has no conceptual imprints.

The essence of mind is empty like space; yet it contains all things, like a mirror.

Although all phenomena are empty of inherent existence, they function perfectly well.

Whatever precious jewel there is in the heavenly worlds, there is nothing comparable to one who is awakened.

Our basic nature is pure awareness that simply cognizes experience. Everything else is temporary and adventitious.

Meditation is not about trying to change your experience; it's about changing your relationship to your experience.

Both formerly and now, it is only suffering that I describe, and the cessation of suffering.

Personal experience is everything in Zen. No ideas are intelligible to those who have no backing of experience.

The basic idea of Zen is to come in touch with the inner workings of our being, and to do this in the most direct way possible, without resorting to anything external or superadded.

The nature of mind is the unity of awareness and emptiness.

The five aggregates are not a theoretical model but a description of lived experience to be investigated through mindfulness.

As long as our orientation is toward perfection or success, we will never learn about unconditional friendship with ourselves, nor will we find compassion.

The more you understand yourself, the more you understand the world.

The mind that sees its own nature becomes free from all extremes.

Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

The only way to fail at meditation is to stop doing it.

The practice of patience guards us against losing our presence of mind.

The more you meditate, the more you understand yourself and the better friend you become to yourself.

Try to be mindful and let things take their natural course. Then your mind will become still in any surroundings, like a clear forest pool.

The Noble Eightfold Path is not a path of mere intellectual understanding but a path of practice, of inner transformation.

Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.

The biggest prison is the one we build in our own mind.

Mindfulness is being aware of what is happening right now, without wishing it were different.

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

For whom emptiness is possible, everything is possible. For whom emptiness is not possible, nothing is possible.

Each moment of noting is a moment of purification, a moment of cultivating the path.

In the moment of pure noting, there is no self - only the knowing and the known.