The secret of Soto Zen is just two words: not always so.... In Japanese, it's two words, three words in English. That is the secret of our practice.

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.'

The human creature, humiliated and offended in ways that are inconceivable to the mind and heart, defies the blind and deaf divinity.

Victory is in our hands! It's time for our legends to begin! Don't tremble, and don't you dare cry! Come on, show some energy!

I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdity of my waking thoughts.

In a certain sense, Zen is feeling life instead of feeling something about life.

Revenge is the easiest of emotions to understand and to manipulate.

To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness, indeed.

I lived with a coffee farmer called Dukale on a trip I made with World Vision to Ethiopia, and realised there's no good reason for the disparity in opportunity around the world.

It was long ago in my life as a simple reporter that I decided that facts must never get in the way of truth.

Most entrepreneurs are not doing it for financial motives in the first place. They're just people who love creating.

You win one and then you win another. You feel more comfortable and more confident, and it snowballs. You can't wait to get to the next hole and play better.