If you want to know your past life, look at your present condition. If you want to know your future life, look at your present actions.

In Zen there must be satori; there must be a general mental upheaval which destroys the old accumulations of intellection and lays down the foundation for a new life.

The victorious ones have said that emptiness is the relinquishing of all views. Those who are possessed of the view of emptiness are said to be incurable.

When the iron bird flies and horses run on wheels, the Tibetan people will be scattered like ants across the face of the earth.

The Four Noble Truths are not merely theoretical propositions but a framework for understanding and transforming our experience.

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

The more we understand impermanence, the more we understand that we can't hold on to anything.

Love is the wish that others be happy, and compassion is the wish that they be free from suffering.

The Buddha's teaching challenges us to master the art of living, to live in a way that leads to the extinction of suffering.

All worldly pursuits have but one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow; acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings in destruction; meetings in separation; births in death.

The essence of the teaching is emptiness and compassion. Without emptiness, compassion can become attachment. Without compassion, emptiness can become cold and distant.

The past is just a memory. The future is just a dream. Be here now.

The color of the mountains is Buddha's body; the sound of running water is his great speech.

Past thoughts are traceless, clear, and empty. Future thoughts are unborn and fresh. The present moment abides naturally and unconstructed.

The Buddha and all sentient beings are nothing but expressions of the one mind. There is nothing else.

The deepest form of happiness comes from discovering the natural peace of our own awareness.

The practice of ethics is not about following rules but about developing inner purity and freedom.

To see the truth, do not be for or against. The struggle between for and against is the mind's worst disease.

Enlightenment is not the end of change but the end of resistance to change.

Do not think you will necessarily be aware of your own enlightenment.

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

The path of practice moves from faith through understanding to direct realization.

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

Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?

Your own treasure house contains everything you need; why search outside?

The past is for learning from, not for living in.

Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.

The purpose of life is to be happy, to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is not to be well known, cited, or powerful.

What we learn about the world is colored by the way we approach it.

If you want to know the past, look at the present. If you want to know the future, look at the present.

The ultimate purpose of Buddhism is to serve and benefit humanity.

The heart of the path is quite simple. No need for long explanations. Give up clinging to love and hate, just rest with things as they are.

There is no way to happiness - happiness is the way.

Just as the great ocean has one taste, the taste of salt, so also this teaching and discipline has one taste, the taste of liberation.

The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.

The way is basically perfect. It is not a matter of practice or enlightenment.

Whatever is dependently co-arisen, that is explained to be emptiness. That, being a dependent designation, is itself the middle way.

If I had any position, I would thereby have a flaw. But since I have no position, I alone am without flaw.

Dependent origination is not a theory about the origin of the world but a teaching that shows how suffering originates in dependence on our own mental processes.

To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening.

This very body is the Buddha. And this very earth the lotus paradise.

True freedom is not the absence of commitment but the presence of choice.

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.

Understanding means throwing away your knowledge.

The water in the ocean can be rough or calm. It can be clear or murky. But the water itself doesn't mind.

The root of all suffering is ignorance. The antidote to ignorance is wisdom that realizes emptiness.

Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there in the imperfection is perfect reality.

Intrinsically all living beings are Buddhas, just as ice and water are of the same substance.

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

The three characteristics - impermanence, suffering, and non-self - are not philosophical concepts but aspects of experience to be directly observed.

The ocean does not reject any water; therefore it is great. The mountain does not select its stones; therefore it is great.

Enlightenment is the realization that we were never really separate from one another or from all of life.

The Buddha's teaching is not about belief but about investigation, not about accepting but about examining.

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

Real peace comes from seeing things as they really are, not as we want them to be.

The mind that notes and the object that is noted are both impermanent. Understanding this leads to liberation.

Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.

The ultimate revolution is the spiritual revolution, where we learn to see reality as it truly is.

The path to enlightenment is not a path at all. It is a realization that where you are is where you have always been.

My father is the intrinsic awareness, Samantabhadra. My mother is the ultimate sphere of reality, Samantabhadri. I belong to the caste of non-duality of these two.