The trick is to keep exploring and not bail out, even when we find out that something is not what we thought.

Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.

The practice of Buddhism is fundamentally a practice of expanding our happiness and diminishing our suffering.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.

All beings by nature are Buddha, as ice by nature is water. Apart from water there is no ice; apart from beings, no Buddha.

The root of suffering is resisting the certainty that no matter what the circumstances, uncertainty is all we truly have.

Life is nothing but a continuous chain of sensations. Pleasant or unpleasant, observe them objectively.

Understanding at the intellectual level is not enough. There must be experience at the actual level.

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.

When we know the truth, we become people who don't have to think much, we become people with wisdom.

Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.

The noting mind and the object noted appear to occur as a pair. Through concentration they are seen to arise and vanish together.

Real freedom is not about controlling our experience, but about being free within our experience.

The nature of the mind is like the sky, and our thoughts, emotions, and experiences are like clouds passing through it.

Ethical conduct is not a constraint upon our freedom but a condition of our freedom.

Concentration is a cornerstone of mindfulness practice. Your mindfulness will only be as robust as your capacity to ground your attention in the present moment.

The silence between the notes is as important as the notes themselves.

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.

Many people think excitement is happiness... But when you are excited you are not peaceful. True happiness is based on peace.

Sankharas are the seeds of consciousness that manifest as sensations. By observing sensations equanimously, we stop creating new sankharas.

Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities.

Don't try to push away the darkness. Just light a lamp. The darkness will disappear by itself.

Knowledge must be stabilized by meditation. Without meditation, knowledge is like a child in battle.

Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.

The path to liberation requires both individual effort and the support of the spiritual community.

The force of the kindness of others is so strong, we can't possibly measure it.

Long is the night to him who is awake; long is a mile to him who is tired; long is life to the foolish who do not know the true law.

The treasure house within you contains everything, and you are free to use it. You don't need to seek outside.

Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

The real purpose of Zen is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes.

Everybody has the light of Buddha within, but they don't look for it.

The practice of mindfulness is simply to bring awareness to what we are doing, what we are saying, and what we are thinking.