Right now, it’s like this.
The instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.
When the student is ready the teacher will appear.
Be the witness of your thoughts. You are what observes, not what you observe.
Remembering a wrong is like carrying a burden on the mind.
Live happily in the present moment. It is the only moment we have.
Abandon yesterday, tomorrow and today. Cross over to the farthest shore beyond life and death.
You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?
If there is any moral in Christianity, if there is anything to be learned from it, if the whole story is not profitless from first to last, it comes to this: that a man should back his own opinion against the world s.
All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.
To follow the path, look to the master, follow the master, walk with the master, see through the master, become the master.
Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
There is no path to happiness: Happiness is the path.
Zen mind is not Zen mind. Throwing away Zen mind is correct Zen mind.
The Buddhist notion of diligence is to delight in positive deeds.
God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
It is easy to believe we are each waves and forget we are also the ocean.
Don’t rush anything. When the time is right, it’ll happen.
God is a loving god.
Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance.
Each step along the Buddha’s path to happiness requires practising mindfulness until it becomes part of your daily life.
Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.
