The strongest of us are those that are spiritually strong, and a spiritual warrior is one of vulnerability.

Then, we realize that the degraded cocoon we have been hiding in is revolting, and we want to turn up the lights as far as we can. In fact, we are not turning up the lights, but we are simply opening our eyes wider. We catch a certain kind of fever.

The epitome of the human realm is to be stuck in a huge traffic jam of discursive thought.

The simplicity of meditation means just experiencing the ape instinct of ego.

In your cocoon, occasionally you shout complaints, such as, "Leave me alone!" "Bug off!" "I want to be who I am!"... which comes from fighting against your environment... You can raise your head and just take a little peek out of the cocoon... The environment is friendly. It is called "Planet Earth."

It's no use trying to be different than you are.

In the garden of gentle sanity, May you be bombarded by coconuts of wakefulness.

We must continue to be open in the face of great opposition. No one is encouraging us to be open and still we must peel away the layers of the heart.

Too often, people think that solving the world's problems is based on conquering the earth, rather than touching the earth, touching ground.

Faith is the readiness to reveal whatever is concealed. You don't have to conceal doubts by putting on patches of self-confirmation. The readiness to be exposed seems to make the difference between ego's approach to spirituality and an enlightened one.

Language should fulfill your individual existence as a wholesome human being... Language should be more than just getting by.

You can almost convince yourself that you've accomplished things just by thinking about them. The alternative is to be more realistic. You don't necessarily regard the dreaming process as bad or an obstacle, but it's not realistic enough.

Any perception can connect us to reality, properly and fully. What we see doesn't have to be pretty, particularly; we can appreciate anything that exists. There is some principle of magic in everything, some living quality. Something living, something real, is taking place in everything.

When you experience your wisdom and the power of things as they are, together, as one, then you have access to tremendous vision and power in the world. You find that you are inherently connected to your own being. That is discovering magic.

A great deal of the chaos in the world occurs because people don't appreciate themselves.

The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality.

The courage to work with ourselves comes as basic trust in ourselves, as a sort of fundamental optimism.

Delight in itself is the approach of sanity. Delight is to open our eyes to the reality of the situation rather than siding with this or that point of view.

Spirituality doesn’t exist on another level different from ordinary life.

It's possible to be completely enlightened... except with your family.

When there is no desire to satisfy yourself, there is no aggression or speed... Because there is no rush to achieve, you can afford to relax. Because you can afford to relax, you can afford to keep company with yourself, you can afford to make love with yourself, to be friends with yourself.

When we hide from the world in this way, we feel secure. We may think we have quieted our fear, but we are actually making ourselves numb with fear. We surround ourselves with our own familiar thoughts, so that nothing sharp or painful can touch us.

Walking the spiritual path properly is a very subtle process; it is not something to jump into naively. There are numerous sidetracks which lead to a distorted, ego-centered version of spirituality; we can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spiritually when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques. This fundamental distortion may be referred to as spiritual materialism.