If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal. Not to people or things.
Sow a thought and reap a deed, Sow a deed and reap a habit, Sow a habit and reap a character, Sow a character and reap a destiny.
My job is not to represent Washington to you, but to represent you to Washington.
It is essential to seek out enemy agents who have come to conduct espionage against you and to bribe them to serve you.
Give them instructions and care for them. Thus doubled agents are recruited and used.
You cannot climb the ladder of success dressed in the costume of failure.
Journey of life is exciting when you challenge your own weaknesses. Some times your enemy teaches you better than your friend.
People who come from dysfunctional families are not destined for a dysfunctional life.
Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one's liberty.
This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.
Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
Youth is wasted on the young.
I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you, come and sit, relax and enjoy yourself for a while.
A master in Zen is not simply a teacher. In all the religions there are only teachers. They teach you about subjects which you dont know, and they ask you to believe because there is no way to bring those experiences into objective reality. Neither has the teacher known them - he has believed them; he transfers his belief to somebody else.
Zen is not a believers world. It is not for the faithful ones; it is for those daring souls who can drop all belief, unbelief, doubt, reason, mind, and simply enter into their pure existence without boundaries. But it brings a tremendous transformation.
Hence, let me say that while others are involved in philosophies, Zen is involved in metamorphosis, in a transformation. It is authentic alchemy: it changes you from base metal into gold. But its language has to be understood, not with your reasoning and intellectual mind but with your loving heart. Or even just listening, not bothering whether it is true or not. And a moment comes suddenly that you see it, which has been eluding you your whole life. Suddenly, what Gautam Buddha called "eighty-four thousand doors" open.
Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.
The task of the priest is to save mankind.
