Nobody today is normal, everybody is a little bit crazy or unbalanced, people's minds are running all the time. Their perceptions of the world are partial, incomplete. They are eaten alive by their egos. They think they see, but they are mistaken; all they do is project their madness, their world, upon the world. There is no clarity, no wisdom in that!

Keep your hands open, and all the sands of the desert can pass through them. Close them, and all you can feel is a bit of grit.

To practice Zen or the Martial Arts, you must live intensely, wholeheartedly, without reserve - as if you might die in the next instant

The silence of the mountain is even more beautiful once the birds are quiet.

Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance.

The body moves naturally, automatically, without any personal intervention or awareness. If we think too much, our actions become slow and hesitant.

Time is not a line, but a series of now-points.