Happiness is an art that one has to learn. It has nothing to do with your doing or not doing.

There is no other greater ecstasy, no other greater blissfulness, than to know who you are. To know the inner space is to know all. It is unlimited silence but not dead, it is alive with songs of its own, with dances of its own.

Each child is poisoned by the society through teaching him ambition. Ambition is a poison far more dangerous than any alcohol can ever be, far more dangerous than marijuana or LSD, because ambition destroys your whole life. It keeps you moving in a false direction. It keeps you imagining, desiring, dreaming, it keeps you wasting your life. Ambition means a subtle creation of the ego, and once the ego is created you are in the grip of darkness. And the whole social structure depends on ambition.

The fragrance of the heart is made up of the qualities and virtues of our spirit. Most of us have learned how to keep our heart closed in a world that would trample all over us if we let it. Being open hearted today seems to require tremendous courage.

Only those people are really sane who have transcended the mind, who have gone beyond it into silence where no thoughts, no desires, no emotions, nothing exists. Only in that peace is your real health.

Zen people love Buddha so tremendously that they can even play jokes upon him. It is out of great love; they are not afraid.

The authentic pagan has no need of religion because, whatever religion can provide, he already has it.