Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.

Increasingly, the world around us looks as if we hated it.

To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, “I am listening to this music,” you are not listening.

But the transformation of consciousness undertaken in Taoism and Zen is more like the correction of faulty perception or the curing of a disease. It is not an acquisitive process of learning more and more facts or greater and greater skills, but rather an unlearning of wrong habits and opinions. As Lao-tzu said, "The scholar gains every day, but the Taoist loses every day.

Where do I begin and end in space? I have relations to the sun and air which are just as vital parts of my existence as my heart.

If you want to stay in a state of illusion, stay in it. But you can always wake up.

If a flower had a God it would not be a transcendental flower but a field.