Buddhist practice is not to eliminate life's problems but to grow with them patiently and with compassion.

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

To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening.

As rain breaks through an ill-thatched house, passion will break through an unreflecting mind.

Every thought, every word, and every action leaves an imprint on our mind.

Meditation is not an escape from life but a way to fully engage with life.

The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in a wider sense.

The idea of Zen is to catch life as it flows. There is nothing extraordinary or mysterious about Zen. I raise my hand; I take a book from the other side of the desk; I hear the boys playing ball outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the neighboring wood: all these I do in Zen.

When mindfulness becomes continuous, the distinction between the observer and the observed begins to break down.

The purpose of meditation is to gain right understanding of the true nature of mental and physical phenomena.

The perfect moment is this one, not the one you're waiting for.

Meditation is like a gym in which you develop the powerful mental muscles of calm and insight.

World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion.

Sankharas are the seeds of consciousness that manifest as sensations. By observing sensations equanimously, we stop creating new sankharas.

The more precisely you note, the more clearly you understand. The more clearly you understand, the stronger your insight becomes.

Meditation is not about getting away from it all. It's about getting into it all.

As a flower that is lovely and beautiful, but is scentless, even so fruitless is the well-spoken word of one who does not practice it.

The quality of every moment depends on the state of our minds.

Where there is great doubt, there is great awakening; small doubt, small awakening; no doubt, no awakening.

Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself.

The superior person is like water, bringing benefit to all without competing.

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

The mind is like a wild monkey, jumping here and there. But through meditation, we learn to see whatever arises in our mind with more spaciousness and clarity.

Happiness is a skill that can be developed like playing an instrument or learning to read.

Generosity generates its own enthusiasm. We don't have to force ourselves to be generous; we just need to start.

The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.

The key to transformation is not to fight with our experience but to open to it with awareness.

Do everything with a mind that lets go. Don't accept praise or gain or anything else. If you let go a little, you will have a little peace; if you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.

Compassion is a verb.

The Buddha's teaching is not about belief but about investigation, not about accepting but about examining.

Where is the place that your original face has not yet emerged?

Zen proposes its solution by directly appealing to facts of personal experience and not to book-knowledge.

Vipassana is the art of living. Not the art of escaping.