We therefore work, not for the work's sake, but for money—and money is supposed to get us what we really want in our hours of leisure and play. In the United States even poor people have lots of money compared with the wretched and skinny millions of India, Africa, and China, while our middle andupper classes (or should we say "income groups") are as prosperous as princes. Yet, by and large, they have but slight taste for pleasure. Money alone cannot buy pleasure, though it can help. For enjoyment is an art and a skill for which we have little talent or energy.

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.

...for thousands of years human history has been a magnificently futile conflict, a wonderfully staged panorama of triumphs and tragedies based on the resolute taboo against admitting that black goes with white.

The whole point of Zen is to suspend the rules we have superimposed on things and to see the world as it is

There is nothing at all that can be talked about adequately, and the whole art of poetry is to say what can't be said.

But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.

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.