To suppress the grief, the pain, is to condemn oneself to a living death. Living fully means feeling fully; it means becoming completely one with what you are experiencing and not holding it at arm's length.

For the ordinary man, whose mind is a checkerboard of crisscrossing reflections, opinions, and prejudices, bare attention is virtually impossible; his life is thus centered not in reality itself but in his ideas of it. By focusing the mind wholly on each objects and every action, zazen strips it of extraneous thoughts and allows us to enter into a full rapport with life.

Zen Master Dogen has pointed out that anxiety, when accepted, is the driving force to enlightenment in that it lays bare the human dilemma at the same time that it ignites our desire to break out of it.

Mindfulness is a state wherein one is totally aware in any situation and so always able to respond appropriately. Yet one is aware of being aware. Mindlessness, on the other hand, or "no-mindness" as it has been called, is a condition of such complete absorption that there is not vestige of self-awareness.

Many have come to realization simply by listening to the tinkling of a bell or some other sound

A Zen master, when asked where he would go after he died, replied, 'To Hell, for that's where help is needed most.'

The truth is that everything is One, and this of course is not a numerical one.