Life is a river,” a wise friend told me. “It’s flowing. You’re never at the same place twice.

You’ve got to live right, too. It’s the way you live that predisposes you to avoid the traps and see the right facts. You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy....

To live in the Great Way is neither easy nor difficult, but those with limited views are fearful and irresolute: the faster they hurry, the slower they go, and clinging cannot be limited: even to...

The sun shines, snow falls, mountains rise and valleys sink, night deepens and pales into day, but it is only very seldom that we attend to such things. . . . When we are grasping...

If the feet of enlightenment moved, the great ocean would overflow; If that head bowed, it would look down upon the heavens.Such a body has no place to rest. . . .Let another continue this...

Only the iPad that autocorrects can write the true thing.

I have lived with several Zen masters — all of them cats.

Again, all of life presents us with two basic ways to treat events. We can either label them “god for us” or “bad for us.” The event is only an event. It’s how we treat...

Activities such as chanting, bowing, and sitting in zazen are not at all wasted, even when done merely formally, for even this superficial encounter with the Dharma will have some wholesome outcome at a later...

Cooking gives you the opportunity to meet the things you eat. You can touch each carrot or olive and get to know its smell and texture.You can feel its weight and notice its color and...

Can we cut the Zen crap for a moment?” I ask. “I’m trying to beat this bag to a pulp.

Suffering builds character and impels you to penetrate life’s secrets. It’s the path of great artists, great religious leaders, great social reformers. The problem is not suffering per se, but rather our identification with our...

Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You’ve got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it.

Nothing needs to be done, and things get done.

No such thing as time travel, he’d rumbled patiently, once. Only live with what you’ve done, and try in the future to do what you’re happy to live with.

The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.

I’m born with wild horses in my head..With an imagination to conquer this world..I will not settle for comforts of a golden cage.

To preserve the silence within–amid all the noise. To remain open and quiet, a moist humus in the fertile darkness where the rain falls and the grain ripens–no matter how many tramp across the parade...

See for yourself whether letting go when a part of you really wants to hold on doesn’t bring a deeper satisfaction than clinging.

5. If You Love, Love Openly Twenty monks and one nun, who was named Eshun, were practicing meditation with a certain Zen master. Eshun was very pretty even though her head was shaved and her...

mystical” if reality is limited to what can be measured by the intellect and senses) is remarkably consistent in all ages and all places. All phenomena are processes, connections, all is in flux…have the mind...

Every day Zuigan used to call out to himself, “Master!” and then he answered himself, “Yes, Sir!” And he added, “Awake, Awake!” and then answered, “Yes, Sir! Yes, Sir!””From now onwards, do not be deceived...

Letting go takes a lot of courage sometimes. But once you let go, happiness comes very quickly. You won’t have to go around search for it.

When you start to wander about in some delusion which is something apart from you yourself, then your surroundings are not real anymore, and your mind is not real anymore. If you yourself are deluded,...

To practice with an end in view is to have one eye on the practice and the other on the end, which is lack of concentration, lack of sincerity.

To enter the Buddha Way is to stop discriminating between good and evil and to cast aside the mind that says this is good and that is bad.

A sand trap is like a politician in its duality. It represents two opposing viewpoints. You see, it was designed to trap your ball. So it exists to have balls land in it. But it...

clouds very high looknot one word helped them get up there

The ignorant eschew phenomena but not thought; the wise eschew thought but not phenomena.

There is a bench in the back of my garden shaded by Virginia creeper, climbing roses, and a white pine where I sit early in the morning and watch the action. Light blue bells of...

this is good, this is bad,” you have already jumped onto the thought process. It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you...

When no discriminating thoughts arise,the old mind ceases to exist.When thought objects vanish,the thinking-subject vanishes,as when the mind vanishes, objects vanish.Things are objects because of the subject;the mind is such because of things.Understand the relativity...

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...