When Zen masters say `effortlessness` they are referring to the state when your enlightenment is well rooted. Now there is no need of any effort; now you can be relaxed and at ease, it will grow on its own accord. It will bring much foliage, and many flowers, and many blessings.

Life exists without rules; games cannot exist without rules. So real religion is always without rules; only false religion has rules, because false religion is a game.

Attachment is the root cause of all misery. Possessiveness is nourishment for the ego.

Hell and heaven are within you, both gates are within you. When you are behaving unconsciously there is the gate of hell; when you become alert and conscious, there is the gate of heaven.

If I fulfill YOUR expectations, how am I going to transform you? I have to DESTROY your expectations. I have to destroy the very mind that creates those expectations. If you come to me, never come with expectations, otherwise you will be disappointed - because I have no obligation to fulfill your expectations in any way. In fact, if I see that there are some expectations, I do things DELIBERATELY to destroy those expectations. That is the price you have to pay to be with me.

Mind is politics, because mind is ambitious and ambition is the root of politics. If you are ambitious you are political. Your ambition may take the form of religion, but the politics is there. Then you are competing with other saints.

Sometimes happiness comes, sometimes sadness, anger, jealousy - you need not make them your problems