Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that.

Practice has to be a process of endless disappointment. We have to see that everything we demand (and even get) eventually disappoints us. This discovery is our teacher.

It's of no use to look back and say, "I should have been different." At any given moment, we are the way we are, and we see what we're able to see. For that reason, guilt is always inappropriate.

We are always doing something to cover up our basic existential anxiety. Some people live that way until the day they die.

To enjoy the world without judgment is what a realized life is like.

Meditation practice is simply moving from a life of hurting myself and others to a life of not hurting myself and others.

Life is a second-by-second miracle.