What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are "coins" for real things.

The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.

Make a spurious division of one process into two, forget that you have done it, and then puzzle for centuries as to how the two get together.

And people get all fouled up because they want the world to have meaning as if it were words... As if you had a meaning, as if you were a mere word, as if you were something that could be looked up in a dictionary. You are meaning.

A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily.

Stop measuring days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence.

Zen... does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.