Thus we see that the all important thing is not killing or giving life, drinking or not drinking, living in the town or the country, being unlucky or lucky, winning or losing. It is how...

In pale moonlight / the wisteria’s scent / comes from far away.

if only people stopped acting like they’ve been asked to donate a lung every time somebody asks for something the world would be a better place

No praise, no blame. Just so.

If you feel depressed for an hour, you’ve produced approximately eighteen billion new cells that have more receptors calling out for depressed-type peptides and fewer calling out for feel-good peptides.

Can the water in the valleys ever stop and rest?When the water finally reaches the sea, it becomes great waves.

O olho transformou-se em olho humano quando seu objeto se converteu em um objeto humano, social, criado pelo homem e a este destinado… Eles [os sentidos] se relacionam com a coisa devido a esta, mas...

Walk slowly through the world and pay attention

…it’s like this. Sometimes, when you’ve a very long street ahead of you, you think how terribly long it is and feel sure you’ll never get it swept. And then you start to hurry. You...

Clarity clattered into my thoughts and brought about a satori, an enlightenment, if you will.

The mind is limitless, in its creations.

Haiku is not a shriek, a howl, a sigh, or a yawn; rather, it is the deep breath of life.

Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.

But I looked out at the waves far below the bluff. They looked violent, erupting against the cliff. I watched them rising – up, up, higher, higher – then falling, crashing, swirling into chaos, passing...

Until today, it really pissed me off that I’d become this totally centered Zen Master, and nobody had noticed. Still, i’m doing the little FAX thing. I write little HAIKU things and FAX them around...

This accidentalmeeting of possibilitiescalls itself I.I ask: what am I doing here?And, at once, this Ibecomes unreal.

The cats were relaxing in a patch of sunlight on the rug without a thought in their sleek brown heads. What matter to them that it was Sunday-or even Thursday? Every day was Today in...

Winslow bounced over on the balls of his feet, clearly not experiencing any sort of crash. ‘Aren’t your guys nervous? I’m nervous as all hell.”There’s nothing to be nervous about,’ Beck said, joining them. ‘Nerves...

When the cart doesn’t move, do you goad the cart or the ox?

If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does,...

*Breathing in, I know this is my in-breath.Breathing out, I know this is my out-breath.*It’s very simple, but very effective. When we bring our attention to our in-breath and our out-breath, we stop thinking of...

When you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be...

Omul perfect își folosește mintea ca pe o oglindă. Nu apucă nimic; nu refuză nimic. Primește, dar nu păstrează.

Nothing can be gained by extensive study and wide reading. Give them up immediately.

Sing before the spirits and dance with the earth deitiesAnd you will be able to compose your own tune.Then you and I, united, will clap hands joyously,Singing ‘tum-tiddly-um tum-tiddly-um-tum.

born born everything is always bornthinking about it try not to

What happens to the drop of wineThat you pour into the sea?Does it remain itself, unchanged?It is as if it never existed.So it is with the soul: Love drinks it in,It is united with Truth,Its...

The eternity of “anytime” shines in this moment “now” while the unlimitedness of “anyplace” is manifested in the limits of “here.” When the universality of “anyone” dances out in the individual “I,” for the first...

Life is very simple. Just sometimes put your head away, sometimes behead yourself, sometimes look with no clouds in the eyes – just look. Sometimes sit by the side of a tree – just feel....

If the eye never sleeps,all dreams will naturally cease.If the mind makes no discriminations, the ten thousand things are as they are,of single essence.To understand the mystery of this One essence is to be released...

These are some of the characteristics of the state of mind which the creation and appreciation of haiku demand: Selflessness, Loneliness, Grateful Acceptance, Wordlessness, Non-intellectuality, Contradictoriness, Humor, Freedom, Non-morality, Simplicity, Materiality, Love, and Courage.

It is not enough to believe in yourself alone; there will come a day when you will fail yourself. That is why we must also believe in a supportive power beyond our control – a...

Consider this:1. Would you ride in a car whose driver was on the consciousness-expanding “entheogenic” drug LSD?And here’s a bonus question:2. Why does an “expanded consciousness” include the inability to operate a motor vehicle?

And what impels him to repeat this process at every single lesson, and, with the same remorseless insistence, to make his pupils copy it without the least alteration? He sticks to this traditional custom because...

Although you may have never sat down and defined what your philosophy is, it is fully operative and working in your life at all times. It deals with what you believe about the world in...

The prospect of future lives in remote heavens as a compensation for the inadequacy of our present lives is a bad tradeoff for losing out on the present.

We grow up to believe that we are supposed to somehow “become” who we are meant to be through the trial-by-fire that is life here on planet Earth.Reality is…there’s no “becoming”.It’s actually all an “un-becoming”,...

The mind’s best trick is the illusion that it exists.

It is as if I have entered what the Tibetans call the Bardo-literally, between-two-existences- a dreamlike hallucination that precedes reincarnation, not necessarily in human form…In case I should need them, instructions for passage through the...

Zazen is better than a home. Zazen is a home that you can’t ever lose.

Life gives you exactly what you need to awaken.

Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one’s heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find...

When it comes down to it, government is simply an abandonment of responsibility on the assumption that there are people, other than ourselves, who really know how to manage things. But the government, run ostensibly...

So, without telling any of my Zen-snob buddies, I liked to pretend everything was the Pure Land, that my life was already perfect as it was.

The way out is through the door. Why is it that no one will use this method?

Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exaltation. To be humble is not to make comparisons. Secure in its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor...

What we can change is our perceptions, which have the effect of changing everything.

When angry, count to Zen.

Love always wins over hate

It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.