You may be reborn a thousand times, but you can never know the real, for only that which dies, that which comes to an end, can renew itself.

To understand life is to understand ourselves, and that is both the beginning and the end of education.

To be free comes not from changing or fixing this world, but from seeing this world as it is and opening the heart in the midst of it.

You are this, which does not satisfy, so you want to be that. If there were an understanding of this, would that come into being? Because you do not understand this, you create that, hoping through that to understand or to escape from this.

Why haven't we, with all our cunning, experience, resolved this problem of fear completely? Isn't fear the cause of the 'me'?

Religion becomes a matter of belief, and belief acts as a limitation on the mind; and the mind then is never free.

Silence is difficult and arduous; it is not to be played with. It isn't something that you can experience by reading a book, or by listening to a talk, or by sitting together, or by retiring into a wood or a monastery. I am afraid none of these things will bring about this silence. This silence demands intense psychological work. You have to be burningly aware - aware of your speech, aware of your snobbishness, aware of your fears, your anxieties, your sense of guilt. And when you die to all that, then out of that dying comes the beauty of silence.