The more you understand, the more you love; the more you love, the more you understand.

The challenge in meditation is not to eliminate thinking but to understand the nature of thought itself.

A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.

Because you are alive, everything is possible.

Compassion is the radicalism of our time.

Time passes unhindered. When we make ourselves better, we make the world better.

When both body and mind are at peace, all things appear as they are: perfect, complete, lacking nothing.

Life is like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope - a slight change, and all patterns alter.

Don't expect or desire anything. Just keep noting whatever arises in the present moment.

The cultivation of loving-kindness has the power to transform enmity into amity, hostility into hospitality.

The practice is simply this: keep coming back to your breath during the day. This will give your mind a steadiness and your life a balance.

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.

The nature of everything is illusory and ephemeral, those with dualistic perception regard suffering as happiness, like they who lick the honey from a razor's edge.

Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile.

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

Whatever is dependently co-arisen, that is explained to be emptiness. That, being a dependent designation, is itself the middle way.

Insight knowledge comes from direct experience, not from intellectual understanding.

In the end, just three things matter: How well we have lived, how well we have loved, how well we have learned to let go.

If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

Zazen is not step-by-step meditation. Rather it is simply the easy and pleasant practice of a Buddha, the realization of the Buddha's Wisdom.

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

Observe the reality as it is, not as you wish it to be.

The supreme path is not to fabricate anything. The supreme meditation is not to be distracted.

What you are is what you have been. What you'll be is what you do now.

The true person is not anyone in particular. But like the deep blue color of the limitless sky, it is everyone, everywhere in the world.

The greatest obstacle to connecting with our joy is resentment.

The past is for learning from, not for living in.

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

In the spring, hundreds of flowers; in autumn, a harvest moon; in the summer, a refreshing breeze; in winter, snow will accompany you. If useless things do not hang in your mind, any season is a good season for you.

The key to meditation is to recognize the nature of your mind rather than trying to change it.

Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness.

The grass is greener where you water it.