Zeena Schreck believes that the right-hand path and the left-hand path have traditionally had the same end goal; it is only the method that is different and the fact that adepts on the left-hand path...

The Buddhists or the Jains do not depend upon God; but the whole force of their religion is directed to the great central truth in every religion, to evolve a God out of man. They...

What you know can never be the beyond. Whatever you experience is not the beyond. If there is any beyond, this movement of ‘you’ is absent. The absence of this movement probably is the beyond,...

An emotion like anger that’s an automatic response lasts just ninety seconds from the moment it’s triggered until it runs its course. One and a half minutes, that’s all. When it lasts any longer, which...

Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.

First, we must see that our negative actions arise due to prejudice and erroneous judgments. The discrimination that labels some as ‘friends’ and others as ‘enemies’ must be perceived as the root of our problems....

Returning to whereIt used to see blossoms,My mind, changed,Will stay on at Yoshino…Home now, and see anew.

I do not dispute with the world, it is the world that disputes with me. A speaker of Dhamma does not dispute with anyone in the world.

When we teach a child patience we offer them the gift of a dignified life.

You cannot control the results, only your actions.

The advantages of developing absorption concentration are not only that it provides a stable and receptive state of mind for the practice of insight meditation. The experience of absorption is one of intense pleasure and...

When you dig a well, there’s no sign of water until you reach it, only rocks and dirt to move out of the way. You have removed enough; soon the pure water will flow,” said...

The possessions themselves were not the problem, it was my relationship with possessing.

The Buddha is found in other people – even the ones we do not like very much.

Leave behind the passive dreaming of a rose-tinted future. The energy of happiness exists in living today with roots sunk firmly in reality’s soil.

We must conduct research and then accept the results. If they don’t stand up to experimentation, Buddha’s own words must be rejected.

Long is the night to him who is awake; long is a mile to him who is tired; long is life to the foolish who do not know the true law.

You don’t understand. I only prostitute the part of the body that isn’t important, and nobody suffers except my karma a little bit. I don’t do big harm. You prostitute your mind. Mind is seat...

When angry, count to Zen.

But if God and immortality be repudiated, what is left? That is the question usually thrown at the atheist’s head. The orthodox believer likes to think that nothing is left. That, however, is because he...

We agreed that at least to some extent the whole punk movement is based on the Buddha’s 1st noble truth of suffering & the dissatisfactory nature of the material world. The punks see through the...

While happiness is an end in itself, it is also the state of mind we can have right now.

Some nonreligious people are disgruntled by the word “faith,” feeling that it has no connection to them. But we all have faith. Broadly speaking, “faith” does not apply only to belief in the supernatural. We...

The point is to be free, not to be crazy.

I was perplexed by the failure of teachers at school to address what seemed the most urgent matter of all: the bewildering, stomach-churning insecurity of being alive. The standard subjects of history, geography, mathematics, and...

Let whatever happens, be what needs to happen, so that I may awaken.

The secret of Buddhism is to remove all ideas, all concepts, in order for the truth to have a chance to penetrate, to reveal itself.

More and more obstacles seem to be other people’s issues that form in the way of a hand to block one, to take notice of them? Sometimes noticing ahead of time, and taking the time...

For a practitioner of love and compassion, an enemy is one of the most important teachers. Without an enemy you cannot practice tolerance, and without tolerance you cannon build a sound basis of compassion. So...

A revolution in the eyes of man carries purpose.A revolution in the eyes of the awakened carries bliss.

For Persons are selves and, in one respect at least, I was now a Not-self, simultaneously perceiving and being the Not-self of the things around me. To this new-born Not-self, the behavior, the appearance, the...

The erruption of feelings & emotions that follows a near-death exerience, or any event that causes us to stop & look deeply at the reality of our lives, is ripe with the potential for insight...

Inner Peace can be seen as the ultimate benefit of practicing patience.

Each one of us is hard at war – within. We must face this battlefield; withdraw, as the psychologist would say, our habitual projections of that strife from the world around us, and realize that...

The Heart-mantra of Dependent Origination (rten-‘brel snying-po [རྟེན་འབྲེལ་སྙིང་པོ]), which liberates the enduring continuum of phenomena and induces the appearance of multiplying relics (‘phel-gdung [འཕེལ་གདུང་] and rainbow lights, is:[OṂ] YE DHARMĀ HETUPRABHAVĀHETUN TEṢĀṂ TATHĀGATOHY AVADAT TEṢĀṂ...

We even, at the worst, reach the state for which Buddhism, in the East presents most ably the case: as in the West, does James Thomson (B.V.) in The City of Dreadful Night; we come...

When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect the mountain exercises vanishes into the air.

People can only live fully by helping others to live. When you give life to friends you truly live. Cultures can only realize their further richness by honoring other traditions. And only by respecting natural...

The Way is not in the sky; the Way is in the heart.

So too, friend, purification of virtue is for the sake of reaching purification of mind; purification of mind is for the sake of reaching purification of view; purification of view is for the sake of...

But, nevertheless, if there is even the slightest recognition, liberation is easy. Should you ask why this is so—it is because once the awesome, terrifying and fearful appearances arise, the awareness does not have the...

You have compassion but by itself it is not enough. It is almost as if you carry around inside you some dead thing. Some heavy black cinder in your heart that burdens you; a ponderous...

[The Buddha] is not dividing himself into worthy and unworthy pieces; he is one being, indivisible, immune from the tendency to double back and beat up on himself. He has seen the worst in himself...

By practicing meditation we establish love, compassion, sympathetic joy & equanimity as our home.

Metta is the ability to embrace all parts of ourselves, as well as all parts of the world. Practicing metta illuminates our inner integrity because it relieves us of the need to deny different aspects...

Greed kills us all.

The question has often been asked; Is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy? It does not matter what you call it. Buddhism remains what it is whatever label you may put on it. The label...

Anger spoils relationships where there should be great reciprocity.

It seems that, without clarity and honesty, we don’t progress. We just stay stuck in the same vicious cycle. But honesty without kindness makes us feel grim and mean, and pretty soon we start looking...

The leaves that remain are only a very small part of the tea. The tea that goes into me is a much bigger part of the tea. It is the richest part.We are the same;...