I am free to write the worst junk in the world.

In the West, a teacher imparts knowledge to a student. In the East, a teacher transmits nothing more or less than his or her Being.

Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth.

In the past few years I've assigned books to be read before a student attends one of my weeklong seminars. I have been astonished by how few people -- people who supposedly want to write -- read books, and if they read them, how little they examine them.

Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.

Because I've been doing my practice for so long, I knew what to do even under really hard circumstances.

Writing is the crack through which you can crawl into a bigger world, into your wild mind.