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

The mind is the source of all happiness and the source of all suffering.

To live is enough.

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

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

Understanding means throwing away your knowledge.

You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.

The path of practice requires both faith and wisdom, both devotion and understanding.

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.

Real happiness lies within. It cannot be found in external objects or achievements.

Birth and death are neither two things nor one thing. Life is not an appearance, death is not a disappearance.

The purpose of meditation is to gain right understanding of the true nature of mental and physical phenomena.

The more we understand our mind, the more we understand the world.

Happiness is not about getting what you want, but wanting what you've got.

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

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

To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is.

The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.

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

The nature of everything is illusory and ephemeral, those with dualistic perception regard suffering as happiness, like they who lick the honey from a razor's edge.

The Buddha taught us to leave alone the things that don't lead to awakening.

Life is like a cup of tea. It's all in how you make it.

What is evil? Killing is evil, lying is evil, slandering is evil, abuse is evil, gossip is evil, envy is evil, hatred is evil, to cling to false doctrine is evil; all these things are evil. And what is the root of evil? Desire is the root of evil, illusion is the root of evil.

When mindfulness becomes continuous, the distinction between the observer and the observed begins to break down.

Wherever you are, you are one with the clouds and one with the sun and the stars you see. You are one with everything. That is more true than I can say, and more true than you can hear.

To live fully is to let go and die with each step.

The present moment is the only moment available to us, and it is the door to all moments.

The law of nature is the law of cause and effect. As you sow, so shall you reap.

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

Change is the nature of every phenomenon. Accept this truth and you will live a happy life.

Suffering comes from our resistance to what is. Peace comes from our acceptance of what is.

Zen in its essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one's own being, and it points the way from bondage to freedom.

Life is like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope - a slight change, and all patterns alter.

The Buddha's teaching is a teaching of self-reliance, of being one's own master, one's own refuge.

The goal of the Buddhist path is not to add something to our existence but to discover something that has been there all along.

Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.

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

If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

Without darkness, there is no light. Without the path, there is no arrival.

The secret of happiness lies not in getting what we want, but in learning to want what we already have.

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth.

To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things.

What Zen wants us to do is to acquire an entirely new point of view whereby to look into the mysteries of life and the secrets of nature.

Enlightenment is not a state of perfection but of authenticity.

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

When you are you, Zen is Zen. Big mind is just big mind.

The purpose of our lives is to be happy, and happiness is found in benefiting others.

The spiritual journey begins with the recognition that beneath our surface happiness there lies a deep inner pain.

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

Wisdom arises when you see the true characteristics of phenomena through direct experience.

True happiness is not about getting rid of all our problems, but about changing our relationship to them.

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there.

Altruism is not a luxury, it is a necessity for the survival of humanity.

We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

Wisdom is not something we have to strive to acquire. Rather, wisdom arises naturally as we open our hearts to the truth of what is.

The true person is not anyone in particular. But like the deep blue color of the limitless sky, it is everyone, everywhere in the world.

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.

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

The Buddha's teaching is not a philosophy or a religion; it is a method of practice.

Recognize the emptiness of all phenomena, but do not become attached to emptiness itself.