All the suffering and joy we experience depend on conditions.

As long as you look for a Buddha somewhere else, you'll never see that your own mind is the Buddha

When you don't understand, you depend on reality. When you do understand, reality depends on you.

Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.

Once you stop clinging and let things be, you'll be free, even of birth and death. You'll transform everything.

All know the way, but few actually walk it.

If you use your mind to study reality, you won't understand either your mind or reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you'll understand both.

To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss.

The essence of the Way is detachment. And the goal of those who practice is freedom from appearances.

The true Way is sublime. It can't be expressed in language. Of what use are scriptures? But someone who sees his own nature finds the Way, even if he can't read a word.

The ignorant mind, with its infinite afflictions, passions, and evils, is rooted in the three poisons. Greed, anger, and delusion.

It's delicious to have people adore you, but it's exhausting, too. Particularly when your own feelings don't match theirs.

Wisdom is the essence of education. Kindness is the essence of morality.

So is darkness better than a heartfelt lie?

And I have to consider myself fortunate, because there are plenty of writers who spend most of a lifetime looking for that certain something without ever finding it.

When a black person has no electricity, no water, they call it the ghetto. When white people have no electricity and no water, they call it camping.

Where's the progress that we're going to see in Afghanistan? You have to keep public support both on the economy and the war or these things will really become troubling.

Oh, you should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about.

If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business—you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic!

Pleasure itself is painful at the bottom.

We should focus on what people get done, not on how many hours or days worked. Just as we don't have a nine-to-five policy, we don't need a vacation policy.