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?