Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it.

Birth and death are neither two things nor one thing. Life is not an appearance, death is not a disappearance.

To live – is that not enough? To love – is that not everything?

The root of all suffering is ignorance. The antidote to ignorance is wisdom that realizes emptiness.

Compassion is not something we develop. It arises naturally as we see the truth of what is.

When you listen to someone, you should give up all your preconceived ideas and your subjective opinions.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

Don't try to push away the darkness. Just light a lamp. The darkness will disappear by itself.

Just as the great ocean has one taste, the taste of salt, so also this teaching and discipline has one taste, the taste of liberation.

There is no difference at all between samsara and nirvana. There is no difference at all between nirvana and samsara.

The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?

It is never too late to turn on the light.

In the spiritual world there are no time divisions such as the past, present and future; for they have contracted themselves into a single moment of the present where life quivers in its true sense.

The goal of Buddhist practice is not to escape from the world but to transform our relationship with it.

We practice to learn how to let go, not how to increase our holding on to things.

The mind is like a room with many windows. Open them all and let the fresh air in.

There is no path to happiness: happiness is the path.

When you walk in the mist, you get wet.

Intrinsically all living beings are Buddhas, just as ice and water are of the same substance.

The six realms of existence are like a dream, why build a prison for yourself?

The Buddha's teaching is a middle way between all extremes, between eternalism and annihilationism, between self-indulgence and self-torture.

Dependent origination is not a theory about the origin of the world but a teaching that shows how suffering originates in dependence on our own mental processes.

The practice of patience guards us against losing our presence of mind.

Life is nothing but a continuous chain of sensations. Pleasant or unpleasant, observe them objectively.

Liberation is found in the practice, not in the theory.

Don't be a bodhisatta; don't be an arahant; don't be anything at all. Being something makes you suffer.

Sensations are not your enemy. They are your teacher. Through observing them, you understand the truth of existence.

The force of the kindness of others is so strong, we can't possibly measure it.

Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed.

What is evil? Killing is evil, lying is evil, slandering is evil, abuse is evil, gossip is evil, envy is evil, hatred is evil, to cling to false doctrine is evil; all these things are evil. And what is the root of evil? Desire is the root of evil, illusion is the root of evil.

If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.

To understand everything is to forgive everything.

Zen in its essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one's own being, and it points the way from bondage to freedom.