To an experienced Zen Buddhist, asking if one believes in Zen or one believes in the Buddha, sounds a little ludicrous, like asking if one believes in air or water. Similarly Quality is not something you believe in, Quality is something you experience.

The funny thing about insane people is that it is kind of the opposite of being a celebrity. Nobody envies you.

Even in the presence of others he was completely alone.

If you stare at a wall from four in the morning till nine at night and you do that for a week, you are getting pretty close to nothingness.

Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.

I've wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it, and yet we didn't see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned perhaps into thinking that the real action was metropolitan and all this was just boring hinterland. It was a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away. I'm looking for the truth." And so it goes away. Puzzling.

(What makes his world so hard to see clearly is not its strangeness but its usualness).Familiarity can blind you too.