I have always known that at last I would take this road but yesterday I did not know it would be today.

Narihara

Having no destination, I am never lost.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Ikkyu

No more words.  Hear only the voice within.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Jalal Ad-Din Rumi

No one can turn you completely upside down and inside out.  You must accept yourself as you are, instead of as you would like to be, which means giving up self deception and wishful thinking

Chogyam Trungpa

When both body and mind are at peace, all things appear as they are: complete, lacking nothing.

Dōgen

Religion is not to go to God by forsaking the world but to find Him in it.  Our faith is to believe in our essential oneness with Him.  "God is in us and we in Him" must be made the most fundamental faith of all religions.

Soen Shaku

You are the light, You are the refuge.  There is no place to shelter but yourself.

Inscription over the Buddha's Ashes

A beginning student complained to his master that the the meditation practice of following the breath was boring.  The Zen master unexpectedly grabbed the student and held his head under water for quite a long time while the student struggled to come up.  Finally, he let the student go.  "Now how boring is your breath?" he asked.

Zen Mondo

Consciousness is in the first place not a matter of "I think" but of "I can".

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Maurice Merleau-Ponty

The Buddha was wandering through India shortly after his enlightenment.  Several men encountered him, and sensed something quite extraordinary about the handsome monk.  "Are you a god?" they asked.

"No", he answered.

"Well, are you a deva or an angel?"

"No."

"Some kind of wizard or magician?"

"No." he said again.

Finally perplexed, the men asked, "Well, what are you?"

"I am awake," he answered.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Buddhist Mondo

Indecision is the key to flexibility.

internet

The trouble with life is that you're halfway through it before you realize it's a do-it-yourself project.

internet

Nobody's perfect, so if you think you're nobody ...

internet

Sympathise with someone who's afraid of the dark, but remember that most people are afraid of the light.

internet

Seeing is never from memory.  It has no memory.  It is looking now.  The total organism is involved in seeing.  Not thinking about what is said from memory, but listening and looking openly now.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Toni Packer

Therefore the mind is like the ocean water; the body is like the waves.  As there are no waves without water and no water without waves, water and waves are not separate, motion and stillness not different.

Kaizen

The real world is beyond our thoughts and ideas; we see it through the net of our desires, divided into pleasure and pain, right and wrong, inner and outer. To see the universe as it is, you must step beyond the net. It is not hard to do so, for the net is full of holes.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Sri Nisargadatta

And so, for the first time in my life perhaps I took the lamp, and went down to my inmost self.  But as I moved further from the conventional certainties, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself.  At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within ... and when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and out of it came - arising I know not whence - the current which I dare to call my life.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Teilhard de Chardin

Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Leacock

Let go.  Don't let up.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Maurine Stuart

The mind creates the abyss, and the heart crosses it.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Sri Nisargadatta

The cloud is free only to go with the wind.  The rain is free only in falling.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wendell Berry

When confusion ceases, tranquillity comes; when tranquillity comes, wisdom appears, and when wisdom appears, reality is seen.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Buddhist Saying

The wisdom of the heart is here, just now, at any moment.  It has always been here, and it is never too late to find it.  The wholeness and freedom we seek is in our own true nature, who we really are.  Whenever we start a spiritual practice, read a spiritual book, or contemplate what it means to live well, we have begun the inevitable process of opening to this truth, the truth of life itself.

Jack Kornfield

You live in illusion and the appearance of things.  There is a reality but you do not know this.  When you understand this, you will see that you are nothing, and being nothing you are everything.  That is all.

Kalu Rinpoche

The purpose of Zen is the perfection of character

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Yamada Roshi

What saves a man is to take a step.  Then another step.  It is always the same step, but you have to take it.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

If you use your mind to look for a buddha, you won't see the buddha.  As long as you look for a buddha somewhere else, you'll never see that your own mind is the buddha.  Don't use a buddha to worship a buddha.  And don't use your mind to invoke the buddha.  Buddhas don't recite sutras.  Buddhas don't keep precepts.  And buddhas don't break precepts.  Buddhas don't keep or break anything.  Buddhas don't do good or evil.  To find a buddha, you have to see your own nature.  Whoever sees his own nature is a buddha ...

Bodhidharma

If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Jack Kornfield

To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chinese Proverb

Time is simply God's way of keeping everything from happening all at once.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anonymous

Meditation is not an escape from life ... but preparation for really being in life.

Thich Nhat Hanh

It is the intensity of the longing that does all the work.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Kabir

There are no Zen masters.  There is only Zen.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . Obaku

Bring yourself back to the point quite gently.  And even if you do nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back a thousands times, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very employed.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .St. Francis de Sales, On Meditation 

It is our very search for perfection outside of ourselves that causes our suffering.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Buddha

The mind creates the chasm which only the heart can cross

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Stephen Levine

The important point of spiritual practice is not to try to escape your life, but to face it - exactly and completely.

Dainin Katagiri

The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is "look under foot."  You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.  The lure of the distance and the difficult is deceptive.  The great opportunity is where you are.  Do not despise your own place and hour.  Every place is under the stars, every place is the centre of the world.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Burroughs

Who is content with nothing possesses all things

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nicolas Boileau Despréaux

Apply yourselves, day after day, year after year, to the study of the "unthinkable".

Soen Nakagawa

Well-being means to be fully born, to become what one potentially is; it menas to have the full capacity for joy and sadness or, to put it still different, to awake from the half-slumber the average man lives in and to be fully awake.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Erich Fromm

Seeing misery in views and opinions, without adopting any, I found inner peace and freedom.  One who is free does not hold to views or dispute opinions.  For a sage there is no higher, lower, or equal, no places in which the mind can stick.  But those who grasp after views and opinions only wander about the world annoying people.

The Sutta Nipata

Silent and serene, forgetting words, bright clarity appears before you.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cheng-Cheuh

When we are mired in the relative world, ever lifting our gaze to the mystery, our life is stunted, incomplete; we are filled with yearning for that paradise that is lost whe, as young children, we replace with words and ideas and abstractions - such as merit, such as past, present and future - our direct, spontaneous experience of the thing itself, in the beauty and precision of this present moment

Peter Matthiessen

Zen does not teach, it points.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D. T. Suzuki

In an archery contest, when the stakes are earthenware tiles a contestant shoots with skill.  When the stakes are belt buckles he becomes hesitant, and if the stakes are pure gold he becomes nervous and confused.  There is no difference as to his skill but, because here is something he prizes, he allows outward considerations to weigh on his mind.  All those who consider external things important are stupid within.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chuang-Tzu