“There is no need to struggle to be free; the absence of struggle is in itself freedom.”

Hold the sadness and pain of samsara in your heart and at the same time the power and vision of the Great Eastern Sun. Then the warrior can make a proper cup of tea.

Ultimately, that is the definition of bravery: not being afraid of yourself.

We say that the sun is behind the clouds, but actually it is not the sun but the city from which we view it that is behind the clouds. If we realized that the sun is never behind the clouds we might have a different attitude toward the whole thing.

The emphasis on practice is because it is the only time in your life you can steer your karmic situation.

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

Sit and do nothing. Every once in a while a golden fish swims by and lays her golden eggs. You’ll know.

You can’t feel the earth if you can’t feel the space.

Sanity lies somewhere between the inhibitions of conventional morality and the looseness of extreme impulse, but the area in-between is very fuzzy.

Developing confidence is like watching the sun rise. First it seems very feeble and one wonders whether it will make it. Then it shines and shines.

There is more to fearlessness than merely having overcome fear… This state of being is not dependent on any external circumstances. It is individual dignity… that comes from being what we are, right now.

The discovery of magic can happen only when we transcend our embarrassment about being alive, when we have the bravery to proclaim the goodness and dignity of human life, without either hesitation or arrogance. Then magic can descend onto our existence.

We are always in transition. If you can just relax with that, you’ll have no problem.

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

Compassion automatically invites you to relate with people because you no longer regard people as a drain on your energy.

Fundamentally, no one can help us. If we seek to relieve our loneliness, we will be distracted from the path. Instead, we must make a relationship with loneliness until it becomes aloneness.

Whatever shakes you should without delay, right away, be incorporated into the path.

Wealth is a means to an end, not the end itself. As a synonym for health and happiness, it has had a fair trial and failed dismally.

justice itself is a chimera, a delusion. Justice is not a flat yardstick, applied in equal measure to an equal situation.

No country has ever closely scrutinized itself visually … I know what we could make of it if people only thought we could dare look at ourselves.

Without ethics man has no future. This is to say mankind without them cannot be itself.

Whether it is the old lady’s fear, or the many ghostly traditions of this place, or the crucifix itself, I do not know, but I am not feeling nearly as easy in my mind as usual.

Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with, not the social-Darwinist economic ‘libertarianism’ of the far right; but anarchism, as prefigured in early.

If the church does not identify with the marginalized, it will itself be marginalized. This is God’s poetic justice.

The body is a self-healing organism, so it’s really about clearing things out of the way so the body can heal itself.