For the ordinary man, whose mind is a checkerboard of criss-crossing reflections, opinions, and prejudices, bare attention is virtually impossible.

Mindfulness is a state wherein one is totally aware in any situation and so always able to respond appropriately. Yet one is aware of being aware. Mindlessness, on the other hand, or no-mindness as it has been called, is a condition of such complete absorption that there is not vestige of self-awareness.

Zen Master Dogen has pointed out that anxiety, when accepted, is the driving force to enlightenment in that it lays bare the human dilemma at the same time that it ignites our desire to break out of it.

Every individual who eats flesh food, whether an animal is killed expressely for him or not, is supporting the trade of slaughtering and contributing to the violent deaths of harmless animals.

The truth is that everything is One, and this of course is not a numerical one.

The uniqueness of zazen lies in this: that the mind is freed from bondage to all thought forms, visions, objects, and imaginings, however sacred or elevating, and brought to a state of absolute emptiness, from which alone it may one day perceive its own true nature, or the nature of the universe.

You yourself are time- your body, your mind, the objects around you. Plunge into the river of time and swim, instead of standing on the banks and noting the course of the currents.

To be reborn hourly and daily in this life, we need to die — to give of ourselves wholly to the demands of the moment, so that we utterly disappear. Thoughts of past, present, or future, of life and death, of this world and the next, are transcended in the superabundance of the now. Time and timelessness coalesce: this is the moment of eternit

If you fall into poverty, live that way without grumbling - then your poverty will not burden you. Likewise, if you are rich, live with your riches. All this is the functioning of Buddha-nature. In short, Buddha-nature has the quality of infinite adaptability.

Die while alive And be thoroughly dead. Then do what you will, All is good.

A Zen master, when asked where he would go after he died, replied, 'To Hell, for that's where help is needed most.'