One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night.
A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.
No one is pro-abortion.
The possibility of stepping into a higher plane is quite real for everyone. It requires no force or effort or sacrifice. It involves little more than changing our ideas about what is normal.
The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one's own mind.
I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I've always been a freak. So I've been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I'm one of those people.
When I meet people from other cultures I know that they too want happiness and do not want suffering, this allows me to see them as brothers and sisters.
Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled.
Unity is divinity; purity is enlightenment.
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
Strength lies not in defense but in attack.
This is the way of Zen, not to say things to their completion. This has to be understood; it is a very important methodology. Not to say everything means to give an opportunity to the listener to complete it.
All answers are incomplete. The master has only given you a direction... By the time you reach the limit, you will know what is going to remain. This way, if somebody is trying to understand Zen intellectually he will fail. It is not an answer to the question but something more than the answer. It is indicating the very reality....
The buddha nature is not something far away - your very consciousness is buddha nature. And your consciousness can witness these things which constitute the world. The world will end but the mirror will remain, mirroring nothing.
You always have a choice but you forget that you have it. Do you remember the energy and enthusiasm you had on the first day of your first job? You consciously chose to do the work you had gladly accepted to do. But then you gradually fell asleep to the choice you made, and the day became "I have to" go to work, instead of "I want to" go to work. You forgot to see all the opportunities which come with work - opportunities like learning, nourishing and being nourished by others, developing new relationships, expanding your personal capacity. Instead you decided it was just something that you had to do to 'get the money'. This is why most people are sleep-walking through their lives, and they dont know it. The solution, choose your work every day, put the energy of love into your relationships...every day, even if you dont particularly like your job or the people around you. And you'll be amazed at how your life transforms. When you choose to put love into what you do, the universe will move heaven and hell to let you do what you love.
None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license.
However long the night, the dawn will break.
