The secret of happiness is to want what you already have.

The way is basically perfect. It is not a matter of practice or enlightenment.

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.

Each moment of clear seeing is a moment of freedom from the illusion of permanence, satisfaction, and self.

The door of your heart can only be opened from the inside.

Looking for peace is like looking for a turtle with a mustache: you won't be able to find it. But when your heart is ready, peace will come looking for you.

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.

Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.

The practice of Zen is forgetting the self in the act of uniting with something.

Face your own anger and you will be free from anger. Face your own fears and you will be free from fear.

Don't take life too seriously. No one gets out alive anyway.

The mind is the source of all happiness and the source of all suffering.

We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.

The more we witness our emotional reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain.

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

All experiences are preceded by mind, having mind as their master, created by mind.

There are only two days in the year that nothing can be done. One is called yesterday and the other is called tomorrow, so today is the right day to love, believe, do and mostly live.

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

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.

Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

The one who grasps at existence suffers in samsara, while the one who grasps at non-existence will find no liberation.

Peace and negativity cannot coexist just as light and darkness cannot coexist.

The Buddha's teachings are not about abandoning our lives but about bringing the fullness of our attention to our lives.

If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.

Those who understand interdependent origination understand suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path.

The practice of Dharma is a constant battle within oneself.

Mindfulness is attention to life, and life itself is sacred.

Mindfulness is the quality and power of mind that is aware of what's happening—without judgment and without interference.

When thoughts arise, recognize them as the display of your own awareness, like recognizing your own children in a crowd.

Radiate boundless love towards the entire world — above, below, and across — unhindered, without ill will, without enmity.

The contradiction so puzzling to the ordinary way of thinking comes from the fact that we have to use language to communicate our inner experience, which in its very nature transcends linguistics.