The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings, the past and the future are not as real, but rather more real than the present.

The Chinese word Li may therefore be understood as organic order, as distinct from mechanical or legal order, both of which go by the book. Li is the asymmetrical, nonrepetitive, and unregimented order which we find in the patterns of moving water, the form of trees and clouds, of frost crystals on the window, or the scattering of pebbles on beach sand.

For we have never actually understood the revolutionary sense beneath them – the incredible truth that what religion calls the vision of God is found in giving up any belief in the idea of God.

Total situations are, therefore, patterns in time as much as patterns in space.

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

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

If we are not totally blind, what we are seeking is already here. This is it.