People who study a lot but don't practice are like a ladle in a soup pot. It's in the soup every day, but it doesn't know the taste of the soup.

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

The awareness that you are here, right now, is the ultimate fact.

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.

The highest truth cannot be taught except through the conventional truth.

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.

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

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

Suffering is not the end of the story; it is the middle of the story.

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

The nature of all things is like a magical illusion, a mirage, a dream, a reflection of the moon in water.

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

The only things that are truly mine are my actions and their results.

If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

The instant you speak about a thing, you miss the mark.

The Four Noble Truths are not mere doctrinal propositions but a framework for understanding and transforming our lives.

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

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

The contradiction so puzzling to the ordinary way of thinking comes from the fact that we have to use language to communicate our inner experience, which in its very nature transcends linguistics.

The more you understand, the more you love; the more you love, the more you understand.

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

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.

Change is possible because there is nothing inherently permanent about our disturbing emotions.

The path to liberation is through understanding the true nature of mind and matter through direct observation.

Life is an art, and like perfect art it should be self-forgetting.

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

Expectations are the thieves of joy.

Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose.

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

Enlightenment is not about becoming something special, but about realizing what we already are.

All that appears and exists, all of samsara and nirvana, has one ground, two paths, and two results. This is the magical display of awareness and unawareness.

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

Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves.

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

The practice of vipassana is the study of the self. When you study physical and mental phenomena, you are studying the truth about yourself.

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.

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

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

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

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

To live – is that not enough? To love – is that not everything?

The teaching of the Buddha is based on two truths: conventional truth and ultimate truth. Without understanding the relationship between these two, the deeper meaning of the Buddha's teaching cannot be understood.

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

Wisdom says we are nothing. Love says we are everything. Between these two our life flows.

The realization of impermanence leads not to despair but to a deeper appreciation of the preciousness of each moment.

The first noble truth of the Buddha is that life contains suffering. The second noble truth is that the cause of suffering is craving.

If you want to know your past life, look into your present condition; if you want to know your future life, look into your present actions.

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

Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.

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

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

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

In the spiritual world there are no time divisions such as the past, present and future; for they have contracted themselves into a single moment of the present where life quivers in its true sense.

Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed.

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

The menu is not the meal.

Since all things are empty of inherent existence, anything is possible. If things had inherent existence, nothing would be possible.

The more you understand impermanence, the more you appreciate every moment.

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.