The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don't wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.

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

If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.

The more we understand our mind, the more we understand the world.

The three characteristics - impermanence, suffering, and non-self - are not philosophical concepts but aspects of experience to be directly observed.

Better to have one moment of genuine meditation than to perform religious activities for a thousand years.

The practice of mindfulness begins in the small, remote cave of your unconscious mind and blossoms with the sunlight of your conscious life.

Self-awareness is the key to freedom. The more we understand ourselves, the more we understand how to be free.

Our own life has to be our message.

Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.

The path is the goal. Every step of the journey is the journey.

The Four Noble Truths are not mere doctrinal propositions but a framework for understanding and transforming our lives.

The most profound meditation is to think nothing at all.

Meditation is the road to happiness.

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.

Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.

Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves.

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

Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control.

Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.

My father is the intrinsic awareness, Samantabhadra. My mother is the ultimate sphere of reality, Samantabhadri. I belong to the caste of non-duality of these two.

The goal of meditation is not to reach some highest place, but to remain in the place where you already are.

There is no way to happiness - happiness is the way.

The difference between buddhas and sentient beings is that buddhas recognize their nature while sentient beings fail to recognize it.

Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

The zazen I speak of is not meditation practice. It is simply the dharma gate of joyful ease.

A disciplined mind leads to happiness, and an undisciplined mind leads to suffering.

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few.

The essence of all phenomena is empty and clear like space. The nature of mind is awareness-emptiness like the sun and sky.

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

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.

To be attached to a thing means that mind and the thing meet and grow into each other.