We think that the world is limited and explained by its past. We tend to think that what happened in the past determines what is going to happen next, and we do not see that it is exactly the other way around! What is always the source of the world is the present; the past doesn't explain a thing. The past trails behind the present like the wake of a ship and eventually disappears.

We have somehow conned ourselves into the notion that this moment is ordinary. This now moment, in which I'm talking and you're listening, is eternity.

Real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.

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.

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