Obstructions on the way to enlightenment, are you kidding? Hey, they crucify people here. You think this is an easy place?

In the West, we think of sports and athletics as individual achievement, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat; it all revolves around the ego. This has nothing to do with the Zen of sports and athletics.

Our larger body is eternity. Eventually, we return to the source in its undifferentiated form, in its absolute form, which is both form and formlessness, but we exist in that sea all the time.

Most human beings are completely out of touch with their spiritual nature and with the inner dimensions that exist within themselves. They don't realize each person has a soul, an inner core of light and intelligence as vast as the ten thousand worlds, whose inner nature is emptiness, ecstasy and happiness.

We applaud the people who are film stars, who get elected to an office, who are very athletic, the small group who play with power in a very limited way. But we're completely oblivious to what can be done to the infinite realities that exist in front of us. We deny them.

In the creative arts you draw a special power. The discipline required is awesome to be an actor or an actress, to be really good, not just another one waiting tables.

He managed to do this 'tour de force' of styles without ever breaking the narrative structure of the chapter he was writing. It is the most brilliant parody of writing styles that I have ever read.