The present is always the best, even when its rough.

When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the attempt to possess them, the essence of natural farming will be realized. The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops,...

We are all part of a universal game. Returning to our essence while living in the world is the object of the game. The earth is the game board, and we are the pieces on...

You will bring yourself the suffering you need to bring yourself so that you may awaken.

Amazing how the most obvious things escape your notice. Maybe the truth is exactly the things you don’t notice. Maybe the aim to see and tell the truth is inherently futile, a contradiction in terms,...

Pardon all runners,All speechless, alien winds,All mad waters.Pardon their impulses,Their wild attitudes,Their young flights, their reticence.When a message has no clothes onHow can it be spoken.

Silence is the language of Om. We need silence to be able to reach our Self. Both internal and external silence is very important to feel the presence of that supreme Love.

Don’t think of what you have to do, don’t consider how to carry it out!” he exclaimed. “The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprose.

The best way for you to get that new experience is to change your response to what happens.

The idea of Zen is to catch life as it flows. There is nothing extraordinary or mysterious about Zen. I raise my hand ; I take a book from the other side of the desk...

The glass is neither half empty, nor half full. The glass is just a glass and it’s content can perpetually change with your perception.

In a Zen retreat we have a format for working with these quicksilver changes: we sit with them, we pay attention to them… Being steady with mindfulness as an anchor for all the changes we...

I sit in meditation…and soon all sounds, and all one sees and feels, take on imminence, an immanence, as if the Universe were coming to attention, a Universe of which one is the center, a...

This will never come again

I have the certainty, now, of not needing certainty. I have the certainty, of uncertainty. The peace, with being uncertain. All is good. All is holy. Whatever you choose, it can be fine. Hatred never...

Does one really have to fretAbout enlightenment?No matter what road I travel,I’m going home.

Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are...

To escape from the world means that one’s mind is not concerned with the opinions of the world.

Learning how to think’ really means learning how to exercise some control over how & what you think. It means being conscious & aware enough to choose what you pay attention to & to choose...

Humility before the flower at the timber line is the gate which gives access to the path up the open fell.

When you catch yourself slipping into a pool of negativity, notice how it derives from nothing other than resistance to the current situation.

tahiya hote pavan nahin pani, tahiya srishti kown utpati;tahiya hote kali nahin phula, tahiya hote garbh nahi mula;tahiya hote vidya nahin Veda, tahiya hote shabd nahin swada;tahiya hote pind nahin basu,nahin dhar dharni na pavan...

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field.I’ll meet you there.When the soul lies down in that grassthe world is too full to talk about.

When mind exists undisturbed in the Way, nothing in the world can offend, and when a thing can no longer offend it ceases to exist in the old way. When no discriminating thoughts arise, the...

If you have mindfulness, if you feel safe, you recognize that you have plenty of conditions to be happy already, and that you don’t need to run into the future in order to get a...

You see something or hear a sound, and there you have everything just as it is.[…]Whatever you do, it should be an expression of the same deep activity. We should appreciate what we are doing....

In general, I call her every night, and we talk for an hour, which is forty-five minutes of me, and fifteen minutes of her stirring her tea, which she steeps with the kind of Zen...

But people of the deepest understanding look within, distracted by nothing. Since a clear mind is the Buddha, they attain the understanding of a Buddha without using the mind.

Every answer you ever need lies within your own silence..

Sometimes it takes a miracle to remind us that the only permanent condition is that of impermanence.

When you’ve understood this scripture, throw it away. If you can’t understand this scripture, throw it away. I insist on your freedom.

What is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of a paradox: a purposeful purposeless or a purposeless...

The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.

No bow can be strung indefinitely, for it will surely break

I don’t know where I’m going on this path. I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. You had to be lost, before you could be found. These are the truths. You had to...

I did not believe in stalemates. I believed in resolutions, one way or another, and if I found myself on the losing end, so be it. Losing meant quiet, and forgetting quickly, and giving up...

There are no problems, only solutions.

Who we are now is all that really matters.

The right art,” cried the Master, “is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the...

If you are surrounded by people who not only don’t believe in your goals and your positive outlook on life, but who also continually try to tear you down, it will be extremely challenging for...

upon” in our consciousness. The mind is one indivisible whole and cannot be torn in pieces. The so-called terra incognita is the concession of Zen to our ordinary way of talking, because whatever field of...

…it should be remembered that men always prize that most which is least enjoyed.

All other creatures look down toward the earth, but man was given a face so that might turn his eyes toward the stars and his gaze upon the sky.

Indicating his twisted legs without a trace of self-pity or bitterness, as if they belonged to all of us, he casts his arms wide to the sky and the snow mountains, the high sun and...

As we live out of such a mind, we become generous, with no sense of tolerance. We become patient, with no sense of putting up with anything. We become compassionate, with no sense of separation....

Too lazy to be ambitious,I let the world take care of itself.Ten days’ worth of rice in my bag;a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?Listening to the night rain on...

Letting go is the lesson. Letting go is always the lesson. Have you ever noticed how much of our agony is all tied up with craving and loss?

To travel is to be alive, but to get somewhere is to be dead.

One must be deeply aware of the impermanence of the world.

The most dangerous thing about an academic education is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract thinking instead of simply paying attention to what’s going on in front of...