1.“The practice of Zen is forgetting the self in the act of uniting with something.”
2.“Life is more or less a lie, but then again, that’s exactly the way we want it to be.”
3.“Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear?”
4.“What we call “I” is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale.”
5.“Have good trust in yourself … not in the One that you think you should be, but in the One that you are.”
6.“What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.”
7.“For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.”
8.“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”
9.“Zen in its essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one’s being, and it points to the way from bondage to freedom.”
10.“Each of you is perfect the way you are … and you can use a little improvement.”
11.“When I feel like dancing, I dance. I don’t care if anyone else is dancing or if everyone else is laughing at me. I dance.”
12.“The true purpose (of Zen) is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes.”
13.“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”
14.“All that we are, is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become.”
15.“Throughout this life, you can never be certain of living long enough to take another breath.”
16.“All I can guarantee you is that as long as you are searching for happiness, you will remain unhappy.”
17.“Whether we like it or not, change comes, and the greater the resistance, the greater the pain.”
18.“When you have understood this scripture, throw it away. If you can’t understand this scripture, throw it away. I insist on your freedom.”
19.“The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.”
20.“Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.”
21.“When an ordinary man attains knowledge, he is a sage; when a sage attains understanding, he is an ordinary man.”
22.“Let go over a cliff, die completely, and then come back to life — after that you cannot be deceived.”
23.“It is easy to believe we are each waves and forget we are also the ocean.”
24.“[A] certain amount of “sitting just to sit” might well be the best thing in the world for the jittery minds and agitated bodies […].”
25.“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.”
26.“To accept some idea of truth without experiencing it is like a painting of a cake on paper which you cannot eat.”
27.“As a bee gathering nectar does not harm or disturb the color and fragrance of the flower; so do the wise move through the world.”
28.“When we realize the everlasting truth of ‘everything changes’ and find our composure in it, we find ourselves in Nirvana.”
29.“To have some deep feeling about Buddhism is not the point; we just do what we should do – like eating supper and going to bed. This is Buddhism.”
30.“Many people think excitement is happiness…. But when you are excited you are not peaceful. True happiness is based on peace.”
31.“If you want to get the plain truth, be not concerned with right and wrong. The conflict between right and wrong Is the sickness of the mind.”
32.“Truth is not far away. It is nearer than near. There is no need to attain it, since not one of your steps leads away from it.”
33.“Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.”
34.“If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion.”
35.“Your mind is a mad monkey trying to understand life which is unfair and crazy. Get used to it.”
36.“It is only with total humility, and in absolute stillness of mind that we can know what indeed we are.”
37.“When we start to feel anxious or depressed, instead of asking, “What do I need to get to be happy?” The question becomes, “What am I doing to disturb the inner peace that I already have?”.”
38.. “Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment.”
39.“People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.”
40.“Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.”
41.“If you are depressed, you are living in the past, if you are anxious, you are living in the future, if you are at peace, you are living in the present.”
42.“You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge.”
43.“If we do not know how to take care of ourselves and to love ourselves, we cannot take care of the people we love. Loving oneself is the foundation for loving another person.”
44.“If you use your mind to study reality, you won’t understand either your mind or reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you’ll understand both.”
45.“The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace. With each step, the wind blows. With each step, a flower blooms.”
46.“This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”
47.“Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness.”
48.“The three elements of creativity are thus: loving, knowing, and doing – or heart, mind, and hands – or, as Zen Buddhist teaching has it; great faith, great question, and great courage.”
49.“Your life is your practice. Your spiritual practice does not occur some place other than in your life right now, and your life is nowhere other than where you are.”
50.“If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few. ”
51.“Happiness only comes when you let go of who you think you are. If you think you are wealthy and powerful and noble and truthful or horrible and demonic, whatever it may be, it is all a waste of time.”
52.“Little people try to control everything. Thus, they control nothing. Wise people focus on one thing, the most important, and let go of the rest.”
53.“When you understand one thing through and through, you understand everything. When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything.”
54.“You must only concentrate on the next step, the next breath, the next stroke of the broom, and the next, and the next. Nothing else.”
55.“Wherever you are, you are one with the clouds and one with the sun and the stars you see. You are one with everything. That is more true than I can say, and more true than you can hear.”
56.“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
57.“Be true to the thought of the moment and avoid distraction. Other than continuing to exert yourself, enter into nothing else, but go to the extent of living single thought by a single thought. ”
58.“Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that.”
59.“If you would spend all your time – walking, standing, sitting or lying down – learning to halt the concept-forming activities of your own mind, you could be sure of ultimately attaining the goal.”
60.“A world which increasingly consists of destinations without journeys between them, a world which values only “getting somewhere” as fast as possible, becomes a world without substance.”
61.“It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts, passing before you. Just witnessing, not interfering, not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness.”
62.“My finger can point to the moon, but my finger is not the moon. You don’t have to become my finger, nor do you have to worship my finger. You have to forget my finger, and look at where it is pointing.”
63.“Zen is a path of liberation. It liberates you. It is freedom from the first step to the last. You are not required to follow any rules; you are required to find out your own rules and your own life in the light of awareness.”
64.“Even if it seems certain that you will lose, retaliate. Neither wisdom nor technique has a place in this. A real man does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death. By doing this, you will awaken from your dreams.”
65.“Not being tense but ready, not thinking but not dreaming, not being set but flexible. Liberation from the uneasy sense of confinement. It is being wholly and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come.”
66.“As long as we remain within the confines of the thinking mind, we can’t experience the state of non-thinking. If we can’t experience non-thinking, we will not understand what our life truly is. Please realize this for yourself! Just sit.”
67.“Life always gives us exactly the teacher we need at every moment. This includes every mosquito, every misfortune, every red light, every traffic jam, every obnoxious supervisor (or employee), every illness, every piece of garbage, every breath. Every moment is the guru.”
68.“The more you suffer, the deeper grows your character, and with the deepening of your character you read the more penetratingly into the secrets of life. All great artists, all great religious leaders, and all great social reformers have come out of the intensest struggles which they fought bravely, quite frequently in tears and with bleeding hearts.”
69.“Buddhism teaches that joy and happiness arise from letting go. Please sit down and take an inventory of your life. There are things you have been hanging on to that really are not useful and deprive you of your freedom. Find the courage to let them go.”
70.“Calmness of mind does not mean you should stop your activity. Real calmness should be found in activity itself. We say, “It is easy to have calmness in inactivity, it is hard to have calmness in activity, but calmness in activity is true calmness.”
71.“There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man’s whole life is a succession of moment after moment. There will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.”
72.“You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”
73.“Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate.”
74.“The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinion for or against.”
75.“Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”
76.“Nothing has ever existed except this moment. That’s all there is. That’s all we are. Yet most human beings spend 50 to 90 percent or more of their time in their imagination, living in fantasy. We think about what has happened to us, what might have happened, how we feel about it, how we should be different, how others should be different, how it’s all a shame, and on and on.”
77.“Craziness is good. Crazy people are happy, free, they have no hindrance. But since you have many attachments, you are only a little crazy. This is not crazy enough. You must become completely crazy. Then you will understand.”
78.“Follow the stream, have faith in its course. It will go on its own way, meandering here, trickling there. It will find the grooves, the cracks, the crevices. Just follow it. Never let it out of your sight. It will take you.”