Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.

We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree.

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.

No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

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

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

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.

The art of living... is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.

Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.

You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.

Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.

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.

The menu is not the meal.

Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.

Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.

Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.