What you possess, you lose.
If you want to climb a mountain, begin at the top.
Still water has no mind to receive the image of the migrating geese.
No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place.
When you get there, there isn’t any there there.
What was never lost can never be found.
Only when you can be extremely pliable and soft can you be extremely hard and strong.
In the end, only three things matter: How much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.
When an ordinary man attains knowledge, he is a sage; when a sage attains understanding, he is an ordinary man.
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.
Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.
Adam was the luckiest man; he had no mother-in-law.
Zen mind is not Zen mind. Throwing away Zen mind is correct Zen mind.
One must be deeply aware of the impermanence of the world.
Before enlightnment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightnment, chop wood, carry water.
The instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.
To study Buddhism is to study ourselves. To study ourselves is to forget ourselves.
In order to fulfill yourself, you have to forget yourself. In order to find yourself, you have to lose yourself.
There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers.
What about Jesus Christ? I say that he was a precursor of idealists; a precursor of socialists.
The clergyman is expected to be a kind of human Sunday.
