If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.

Imagine a multidimensional spider's web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image.

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

I find that the sensation of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is really a hallucination.

No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.

When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique.

If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly.

To remain stable is to refrain from trying to separate yourself from a pain because you know that you cannot. Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape.

The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually "grasp"

You can't live at all unless you can live fully now.

Buddhism ... is not a culture but a critique of culture, an enduring nonviolent revolution or "loyal opposition" to the culture in which it is involved.

Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you're a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don't feel that we're still the big bang. But you are.

In reality there are no separate events. Life moves along like water, it's all connected to the source of the river is connected to the mouth and the ocean.

This present moment never comes to be and it never ceases to be, it is simply our minds that construct the continuity of thoughts we call time. In the present moment is nirvana.

Philosophy is man’s expression of curiosity about everything and his attempt to make sense of the world primarily through his intellect.

Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.

The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.

We have somehow conned ourselves into the notion that this moment is ordinary. This now moment, in which I'm talking and you're listening, is eternity.

The psychotherapist ... tries to help the individual to be himself and to go it alone without giving unnecessary offense to his community, to be in the world (of social convention) but not of the world.

You don't need to try to be God, you are! But if you try to be God it means you don't know you are.

Real travel requires a maximum of unscheduled wandering, for there is no other way of discovering surprises and marvels, which, as I see it, is the only good reason for not staying at home.

Duality is always secretly unity.

We must be careful that the business we build does not become mere busyness.