Whoever told you that practice and enlightenment are separate?

When the heart is still, it can be kind. When the mind is still, it can see clearly.

Silence is so much more productive of wisdom and clarity than thinking.

The most profound meditation is to think nothing at all.

To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things.

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

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost.

Whatever is happening is the path to enlightenment.

Those who grasp at things as truly existent are like someone trying to catch the reflection of the moon in water.

Compassion is not just about being kind to others. It's about being kind to ourselves as well.

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

Our defilements are like tame tigers. If you feed them, they're tame. If you stop feeding them, they'll eat you up.

Let none find fault with others; let none see the omissions and commissions of others. But let one see one's own acts, done and undone.

Every moment is a fresh beginning. Every breath is a new chance.

When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce.

True happiness is born of letting go of what is unnecessary.

In the moment of love, awareness is very strong. Use that awareness, that strength of consciousness, to look into yourself.

Life is an art, and like perfect art it should be self-forgetting.

If you love someone, the greatest gift you can give them is your presence.

Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose.

Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink.

The key to the Buddha's teaching is not grasping, not trying to hold onto things that are essentially impermanent and unstable.

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

You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.

Like a dream, like an illusion, like a city of gandharvas, that's how birth, and that's how living, that's how dying are taught to be.

Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already.

The person who clings to nothing of the past, present and future, who has no attachment and no aversion, has no conceptual imprints.

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

Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty. We can't simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment.

The practice of mindfulness is simply to bring awareness to what we are doing, what we are saying, and what we are thinking.

As long as our orientation is toward perfection or success, we will never learn about unconditional friendship with ourselves, nor will we find compassion.

The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.

The purpose of Buddhist practice is not to become a Buddhist but to awaken to the nature of reality.