Zen Proverb

When an ordinary man attains knowledge, he is a sage; when a sage attains understanding, he is an ordinary man.

Inner surrender leads to the highest truth.

When you hear that all beings are Buddha, don’t fall into the error of thinking there’s more than one Buddha.

Still water has no mind to receive the image of the migrating geese.

The ordinary mind is the way.

Learning Zen is a phenomenon of gold & dung. Before you learn it, it’s like gold; after you learn it, it’s like dung.

Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

Christianity is the highest perfection of humanity.

[On religion:] Wasn’t it invented by man for a kind of solace? It’s as though he had said, ‘I’ll make me a nice comfortable garment to shut out the heat and the cold,’ and then it ends by becoming a strait-jacket.

A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.

You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.

Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ has been crucifying in a quiet way ever since.

Live happily in the present moment. It is the only moment we have.

I’m essentially agnostic. I don’t have a problem with God. I have a problem with religion. I’ve chosen to live my life without the certainties of religious faith. I think they’re dangerous. Music is something that gives my life value and spiritual solace.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

The Bible does not need advertising by me, but I wish more people could be persuaded to read it. Perhaps if they had been, we should not have this war on our hands. For greed and idleness brought it on.

Nothing ever exists entirely alone. Everything is in relation to everything else.

It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.

The fact that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than any other single reason. That, that my friends, that is true perversion!

The less you respond to negative people, the more peaceful your life will become.

We’ve had the goddam Ages of Faith, we’ve had the goddam Age of Reason. This is the Age of Publicity.