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

The restraint of the senses is not a matter of suppression but of wise attention to our experience.

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

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.

Happiness is not the pursuit of an endless succession of experiences but an attitude toward life.

The Buddha's teaching is not a philosophical system but a practical guide to living.

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 Buddha's teachings are not about abandoning our lives but about bringing the fullness of our attention to our lives.

If it isn't good, let it die. If it doesn't die, make it good.

The difference between being caught in thoughts and being mindful of thoughts is like the difference between being in a movie and watching a movie.

The mind is the forerunner of all things. Our present life is the result of our past thoughts, and our future life will be the result of our present thoughts.

Looking for peace is like looking for a turtle with a mustache: you won't be able to find it. But when your heart is ready, peace will come looking for you.

Faith is not a commodity that you either have or don't have - it is an inner quality that unfolds as we learn to trust our own deepest experience.

Understanding means throwing away your knowledge.

Compassion is the radicalism of our time.

Craving and aversion are the roots of suffering. Observe them with equanimity.

Mindfulness is being aware of what is happening right now, without wishing it were different.

We practice to learn how to let go, not how to increase our holding on to things.

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

If you want to understand suffering, you must look into the situation at hand. The teachings say that wherever a problem arises it must be settled right there.

The goal is not to be better than the other man, but your previous self.

The root of suffering is not in the world outside us but in our own minds.

The future is completely open, and we are writing it moment to moment.

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

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

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

Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.

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

The affairs of the world will go on forever. Do not delay the practice of meditation.

There is no need to have a deep understanding of Zen. Even though you read much Zen literature, you must read each sentence with a fresh mind.

We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

The biggest prison is the one we build in our own mind.

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

Zen proposes its solution by directly appealing to facts of personal experience and not to book-knowledge.

The Buddha's teaching is a middle way between all extremes, between eternalism and annihilationism, between self-indulgence and self-torture.

The great gift of meditation is that it returns us to the simplicity of our own being.

The dharma is not about collecting more beliefs but about becoming free from the power of belief itself.

Freedom is not found in the absence of difficulty, but in our relationship to it.

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

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

Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what's happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what's happening.

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

The measure of success in spiritual life is how peaceful you are.

If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?

When you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point.

The root of happiness is altruism — the wish to be of service to others.

The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don't wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.

Mindfulness is the key to the present moment. Without it we cannot see the world clearly, and we cannot make the wisest choices in our lives.

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

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

When we recognize that our thoughts are just thoughts, we can choose whether or not to follow them.

Don't try to change the world. First, change yourself.

Karma is not fate but the law of moral causation, showing us that we are the architects of our own destiny.

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

The essence of meditation is not something complicated or exotic. It is simply taking a break from our habitual patterns.

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.

The development of insight is gradual, but the realization of truth is sudden.

Right View is not just a matter of intellectual understanding but of seeing things as they really are.

Do not mistake understanding for realization, and do not mistake realization for liberation.

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.