Zen is a kind of unlearning. It teaches you how to drop that which you have learned, how to become unskillful again, how to become a child again, how to start existing without mind again, how to be here without any mind.

And remember, that is the criterion. If a person can enjoy and celebrate his death, that shows he has lived rightly; there is no other criterion. Your death will prove how you have lived.

I have heard about a patient - the psychiatrist was bored with him. Of course, he was getting enough money out of him, but he was getting bored by and by - three, four, five years of psychoanalysis, and the man was repeating the same again and again and again. The psychiatrist said, 'Do one thing: go to the mountains for a few days. That will be very helpful.'

Only people who carry the opinions of others need the support of others.

Only authentic human beings can create a society which will be joyous, ecstatic, and in the real sense, human.

The day you think you know, your death has happened - because now there will be no wonder and no joy and no surprise. Now you will live a dead life.

My people. I have given them a sense of individuality, integrity. I have not made them slaves of any god or any religion. Nor of any holy book or any priest. I have certainly not replaced their god. They are all a part of what I call my traveling circus.