There is one thing in life that you can always rely on: life being as it is.

Life always gives us exactly the teacher we need at every moment. This includes every mosquito, every misfortune, every red light, every traffic jam, every obnoxious supervisor (or employee), every illness, every loss, every moment of joy or depression, every addiction, every piece of garbage, every breath. Every moment is the guru.

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

An old Zen rule of thumb is not to answer until one has been asked three times.

Trust in things being as they are is the secret of life. But we don't want to hear that. I can absolutely trust that in the next year my life is going to be changed, different, yet always just the way it is.

How do we know if our practice is a real practice? Only by one thing: more and more, we just see the wonder. What is the wonder? I don't know. We can't know such things through thinking. But we always know it when it's there.

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.