You’re only making a mess by trying to put things straight. You’re trying to straighten out a wiggly world and no wonder you’re in trouble.

It is almost ridiculous to ask, “Why meditate?” as if it were going out of one’s way to do something bizarre, like lying on a bed of nails. Why look at the stars or watch clouds? Why go sailing to no fixed destination? Nothing is really explained by its cause or motivation, for we find only causes behind causes until we can pursue them no longer.

To understand that there is no security is far more than to agree with the theory that all things change, more even than to observe the transitoriness of life. The notion of security is based on the feeling that there is something within us which is permanent, something which endures through all the days and changes of life. We are struggling to make sure of the permanence, continuity, and safety of this enduring core, this center and soul of our being which we call “I.” For this we think to be the real man—the thinker of our thoughts, the feeler of our feelings, and the knower of our knowledge. We do not actually understand that there is no security until we realize that this “I” does not exist.

You have within you the most amazing logical analyzer that exists in the known world. And the point is to get it to work for you.

A lot of people think that omniscience is like knowing everything that’s in the Encyclopædia Britannica. That’s not omniscience, that’s intellectual elephantiasis.

Zen deals with reality—the universe—as it is, and not as it is thought about and described. The heart of Zen is not an idea but an experience, and when that experience happens—and happens is just the right word—you are set free from ideas altogether. Certainly, you can still use them, but you no longer take them seriously.

Nobody ever transforms himself into an enlightened pattern of life by dividing himself in two pieces, “Good I” and “Bad Me,” wherein Good I preaches to Bad Me and tries to make me over.

If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time. You’ll be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living; that is, to go on living doing things you don’t like doing—which is stupid! Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.

The life of affluence and pleasure requires exact discipline and high imagination. Somewhat as metals deteriorate from “fatigue,” every constant stimulation of consciousness, however pleasant, tends to become boring and thus to be ignored.

It must be obvious that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness.

You know very well that after you die, and after everybody else that you’ve ever known about died, babies of all kinds—both human, animal, and vegetable—were born. And each one of them feels that it’s “I” in just exactly the same way that you do; feels that it’s the center of the universe. And therefore, every one of them is you. Only, this situation can only be experienced one at a time. So, you see: you will die and then someone else will be born. But it will feel like you—you, now. It will be, in other words, “I.” There is only one “I.” But it’s infinitely varied.

Go back in your memory, go back into your infancy. Who are you? And if you get with that, you know very well who you are.

When each moment becomes an expectation, life is deprived of fulfillment and death is dreaded, for it seems that here expectation must come to an end. While there is life there is hope—and if one lives on hope, death is indeed the end. But to the undivided mind, death is another moment, complete like every moment, and cannot yield its secret unless lived to the full.

You should not have a lovely view too easily visible. You should make a little bit of effort to go to the place where the beautiful view is. Because then you won’t just take it for granted, you really devote yourself to it.

The fun of this whole thing is to make patterns, to figure out games, to do something with it.

Many little children know from the beginning what life is all about, only they haven't got the words to tell us.

The biggest ego trip going is getting rid of your ego. And the joke of it all is: your ego doesn’t exist! There’s nothing to get rid of. It’s an illusion.

“Matter” comes from a Sanskrit root “mātrā”, which means to measure. To lay out the foundation, say, for a building. So from this root mātrā, going on into Sanskrit, we get the word “maya”. And maya is generally translated illusion. Although it also means magic, creative power. The word “illusion”, switch over, we get that from Latin. And that comes from the Latin “lūdere”—to play, let’s pretend, that we matter. And so, also from the root mātrā, you see you get “meter”. That is also to measure. You get “mi̱tí̱r” in Greek, “mater” in Latin which means mama, mother. The mother of Buddha was called Maya. Mary, “ma” again, was the mother of Jesus. Ma ma ma ma ma.

Every one of us is a whirlpool in the tide of existence, and wherein every cell in our body, every molecule, every atom is in constant flux, and nothing can be pinned down.

We are not living in the eternal now, where reality is. We are always thinking that the satisfaction of life will be coming later. “There’s a good time coming, be it ever so far away.” That one far-off, divine event to which all creation moves. Don’t kid yourself.

Religions are always involved in some kind of sales pitch. They say: if you would do what I tell you or what we preach, it will be good for you, it will make something better. And endlessly, endlessly, it doesn’t.