You cannot force meditation, you can only create the situation. And if the situation is created rightly, then meditation happens automatically.

Desire disappears as you become more and more aware. When awareness is one hundred percent, there is no desire at all.

Love is not a relationship, love is a state of being; it has nothing to do with anybody else. One is not "in love", one is love. And of course when one is love, one is in love – but that is an outcome, a by-product, that is not the source. The source is that one is love.

Any mundane activity can become meditative. Digging a hole in the garden, planting new roses in the garden - you can do it with such tremendous love and compassion, you can do it with the hands of a buddha.

There is nothing ugly about death; but man, out of his fear, has made even the word, death ugly and unutterable. People don't like to talk about it. They won't even listen to the word death.

This is the Zen approach: nothing is there to be done. There is nothing to do. One has just to be. Have a rest and be ordinary and be natural.

The essential religion is taking the whole responsibility for whatsoever you are. And immediately an insight arises: 'If I am responsible for my suffering, then it is simple, I can drop it. It is my choice. I will not choose it any more.'