I was very attracted to the way that Zen did not go into the imagination land. And now I've forgotten what your first question was and how we were going to tie this together.

Disappointment is just the action of your brain readjusting itself to reality after discovering things are not the way you thought they were.

How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb? The plum tree in the garden!

You can always improve your situation. But you do so by facing it, not by running away.

Compassion is the ability to see what needs doing right now and the willingness to do it right now.

You can't function in society if you don't involve yourself in the fictions society accepts about time. But you do so with the understanding that you're playing a game.

The truth comes when you can see that your self-image is just a convenient reference point and nothing more, and that you as you had imagined yourself do not exist.

Do what you do as well as you possibly can. That's Buddhist morality.

Truly compassionate action arises spontaneously without thought and is carried out in real action with no anticipation of reward and, indeed, no concept of a doer of that action.

Your role is to do and say the things that need to be done and said from your unique perspective.

Reality's all you've got. But here's the real secret, the real miracle: it's enough.

You're better than seven years of food. You're better than windows. You're even better than the sky.

Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it....

I still loved Granny. It flowed out of my chest. With Granny gone, where would my love go?

Service of self is best developed in dealings of service to others.

One of the perils of life is to be asked a question which the wisest of them cannot answer. But a smile does the job.

Irish was a man of parts even if some of them didn't work too well.

For neither life nor nature cares if justice is ever done or not.

An individual's arrogance is always in proportion to his lack of self-assurance.

Justice always whirls in equal measure.

Glen Cove. [Referring to Glenn Close on a movie review television show]