To be a good Zen Buddhist it is not enough to follow the teaching of its founder; we have to experience the Buddha's experience.

Leave your front door and your back door open. Allow your thoughts to come and go. Just don't serve them tea.

When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.

Unless we are willing to encourage our children to reconnect with and appreciate the natural world, we can't expect them to help protect and care for it.

When we start to feel anxious or depressed, instead of asking, "What do I need to get to be happy?" The question becomes, "What am I doing to disturb the inner peace that I already have?"

Nothing outside yourself can cause any trouble. You yourself make the waves in your mind. If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm. This mind is called big mind.

Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.

The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one's humdrum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity.

If you can just appreciate each thing, one by one, then you will have pure gratitude. Even though you observe just one flower, that one flower includes everything

The most important point is to accept yourself and stand on your two feet.

Wherever you go you will find your teacher, as long as you have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.

Be passionate about your dreams and never give sleep to your eyes until your good becomes better and your better becomes the best.

We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.

At my age, I don't think anyone is untouched by cancer.

Dust does rise, doesn't it? And so can I.

Extending over more than a century and including most nations of the globe, the cause of woman suffrage has been one of the great democratic forces in human history.

Leaders should be the chief repenters.

I'm lucky that so many children visit my website. At least I get to talk with them that way.

Could one imagine a stone's having consciousness? And if anyone can do so-why should that not merely prove that such image-mongery is of no interest to us?

I think definitely people know me from playing creeps and weirdos, and I'm definitely looking to expand my range.

I very much regret, in appearing before you at your request, to address you on the present state of the country, and the prospect before us, that I can bring you no good tidings.