It is obvious that the only interesting people are interested people, and to be completely interested is to have forgotten about "I".

There is an ineffable mystery that underlies ourselves and the world. It is the darkness from which the light shines. When you recognize the integrity of the universe and that death is as certain as birth, then you can relax and accept that this is the way it is. There is nothing else to do.

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

Only words and conventions can isolate us from the entirely undefinable something which is everything.

Here is the vicious circle: if you feel separate from your organic life, you feel driven to survive; survival -going on living- thus becomes a duty and also a drag because you are not fully with it; because it does not quite come up to expectations, you continue to hope that it will, to crave for more time, to feel driven all the more to go on.

Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.

This is what Zen means by being detached—not being without emotion or feeling, but being one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked, and through whom the experiences of the world pass like the reflections of birds flying over water.