“And as long as you’re subject to birth and death, you’ll never attain enlightenment.”

The true Way is sublime. It can’t be expressed in language. Of what use are scriptures? But someone who sees his own nature finds the Way, even if he can’t read a word.

But when you first embark on the Path, your awareness won’t be focused. You’re likely to see all sorts of strange, dreamlike scenes. But you shouldn’t doubt that all such scenes come from your own mind and nowhere else.

The ultimate Truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They’re not the Way.

Our nature is the mind. And the mind is our nature.

To have a body is to suffer. Does anyone with a body know peace? Those who understand this detach themselves from all that exists and stop imagining or seeking anything. The sutras say, “To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss.” When you seek nothing, you’re on the Path.

But this mind isn’t somewhere outside the material body of the four elements. Without this mind we can’t move. The body has no awareness. Like a plant or a stone, the body has no nature. So how does it move? It’s the mind that moves.

Delusion means mortality. And awareness means Buddhahood.

When mortals are alive, they worry about death. When they’re full, they worry about hunger. Theirs is the Great Uncertainty. But sages don’t consider the past. And they don’t worry about the future. Nor do they cling to the present. And from moment to moment they follow the Way.

People of this world are deluded. They’re always longing for something – always, in a word, seeking.

All the suffering and joy we experience depend on conditions.

Buddha means awareness, the awareness of body and mind that prevents evil from arising in either.

As long as you’re enthralled by a lifeless form, you’re not free.

Worship means reverence and humility. It means revering your real self and humbling delusions. If you can wipe out evil desires and harbor good thoughts, even if nothing shows, it’s worship. Such form is its real form.

Freeing oneself from words is liberation.

All know the way, but few actually walk it.

Not suffering another existence is reaching the Way.

Possessive parents rarely live long enough to see the fruits of their selfishness.

And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours

But herein lies the rub: Christianity has been on a long-term trend of decline in every Western cultural context that we can identify.

There are no easy choices. Easy choices are long gone.

John showed up to rehearsal with a long list of name suggestions, and I remember each and every one of them.

Be who you like as long as you mean it.

I’ve been writing full-time since 1978.

The poet lives as long as his lines are imprinted on the minds of his readers.