The more you practice zazen, the more you will be able to accept something as your own, whatever it is.

Leave your front door and your back door open. Allow your thoughts to come and go. Just don't serve them tea.

When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.

Nothing outside yourself can cause any trouble. You yourself make the waves in your mind. If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm. This mind is called big mind.

Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.

If you can just appreciate each thing, one by one, then you will have pure gratitude. Even though you observe just one flower, that one flower includes everything

The most important point is to accept yourself and stand on your two feet.

Wherever you go you will find your teacher, as long as you have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.

As soon as you see something, you already start to intellectualize it. As soon as you intellectualize something, it is no longer what you saw.

It must be obvious...that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.

When my master and I were walking in the rain, he would say, 'Do not walk so fast, the rain is everywhere.'

It's okay to be impatient. As long as you show your patience on the outside.

Basically, when it comes to women, both aging and eating are somehow shameful.

Frankly, health care and politics are "inextricably intertwined."

It's like an open mark [for the terrorists], do whatever you wanna do, nothing's gonna happen. Take our youth out of the country, infiltrate our country in so many different ways.

Shine Son of glory, and my sinnes are goneLike twinkling Starres before the rising Sunne.

You must not think, sir, to catch old birds with chaff.

I delivered leaflets for my dad and was paid £5 per thousand, which was slave labour.

Miracles surround us at every turn if we but sharpen our perceptions of them.

I have the belief that a person and his art should have one direction; your work should be a synonym for your person - the two shouldn't be separate.

I believe people run marathons every day of their lives in one way or another, and we need to remember to give ourselves the finishers' medals we deserve.