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

You are the universe experiencing itself.

So what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level.

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

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

No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen.

This is the real secret of life – to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in

Life is not a problem to be solved, but an experience to be had.

If you cannot trust yourself, you cannot even trust your mistrust of yourself – so that without this underlying trust in the whole system of

To go out of your mind once a day is tremendously important, because by going out of your mind you come to your senses. And

If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you’ll spend your life completely wasting your time. You’ll be doing things you

We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.

A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world.

Wars based on principle are far more destructive… the attacker will not destroy that which he is after.

Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by somekind of cosmic lawgiver.

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.

In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone

If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly.

The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always

The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it,

We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is. If you awaken from this illusion,

Faith is a state of openness or trust.

You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

But I’ll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that

But to me nothing – the negative, the empty – is exceedingly powerful.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there

Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done; it’s just doing it.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe.

And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.

The reason we want to go on and on is because we live in an impoverished present.

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

Saints need sinners.

In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe,

Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they

You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.

The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but

For unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax. There is no point whatever in making plans for

I owe my solitude to other people.

The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.

And although our bodies are bounded with skin, and we can differentiate between outside and inside, they cannot exist except in a certain kind of

Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.

The difficulty for most of us in the modern world is that the old-fashioned idea of God has become incredible or implausible.

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do.

The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.

So the bodhisattva saves all beings, not by preaching sermons to them, but by showing them that they are delivered, they are liberated, by the

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque

But my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

Peace can be made only by those who are peaceful, and love can be shown only by those who love. No work or love will

So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.

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

We do not really want continuity, but rather a present experience of total happiness.

Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.

To resist change, to try to cling to life, is therefore like holding your breath: if you persist you kill yourself.

Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.

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

But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.