Zen Proverb

Inner surrender leads to the highest truth.

To follow the path, look to the master, follow the master, walk with the master, see through the master, become the master.

To be calm is the highest achievement of the self.

Before enlightnment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightnment, chop wood, carry water.

What you possess, you lose.

When you get there, there isn’t any there there.

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

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.

Outside the kingdom of the Lord there is no nation which is greater than any other. God and history will remember your judgment.

I feel the presence of a higher power. I believe that what you give is what you get. It’s universal law. I believe in the power of prayer and of words. I’ve learned that when you predict that negative things will happen, they do.

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.

Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.

It was the schoolboy who said, Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.

For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.

The whole secret of existence is to have no fear.

Our God is a forgiving God.

When you get there, there isn’t any there there.

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.

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.