Until we recognize the SELF that exists apart from who we think we are - we cannot know the Ch'an ( ZEN ) MIND

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.

Unless we are willing to encourage our children to reconnect with and appreciate the natural world, we can't expect them to help protect and care for it.

When we start to feel anxious or depressed, instead of asking, "What do I need to get to be happy?" The question becomes, "What am I doing to disturb the inner peace that I already have?"

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.

The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one's humdrum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity.

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.

You may need courage to say "NO", But you must be brave enough to say "YES" and not to do it

You may GIVE UP in self-denial but you GIVE–IN in denial of self.

Ala!" Echo sprang to her feet, legs tangled in the sheets. The Ala was here. The Ala had brought food. The Ala was a goddess

By the late '70s I had come to question the point of a great deal of what we were doing, in terms of the CIA's overall charter.

Why is life speeded up so? Why are things so terribly, unbearably precious that you can't enjoy them but can only wait breathless in dread of their going?

Fame - anyone who says he doesn't like it is crazy

Education helps you earn more. But not many schoolteachers can prove it.

To know what a person has done, and to know who a person is, are very different things.

The most important thing is a person. A person who incites your curiosity and feeds your curiosity; and machines cannot do that in the same way that people can.

Each experience in your lifewas absolutely necessary in order to have gotten you to the next place, and the next place, up to this very moment.