“Once you stop clinging and let things be, you’ll be free, even of birth and death. You’ll transform everything.”

And the Buddha is the person who’s free: free of plans, free of cares.

But while success and failure depend on conditions, the mind neither waxes nor wanes.

Externally keep yourself away from all relationships, and internally have no pantings in your heart; when your mind is like unto a straight-standing wall, you may enter into the Path.

If you see your nature, you don’t need to read sutras or invoke buddhas. Erudition and knowledge are not only useless but also cloud your awareness. Doctrines are only for pointing to the mind. Once you see your mind, why pay attention to doctrines?

Not thinking about anything is zen. Once you know this, walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is zen. To know that the mind is empty is to see the buddha…. Using the mind to reality is delusion. Not using the mind to look for reality is awareness. Freeing oneself from words is liberation.

The Dharma is the truth that all natures are pure.

If your mind is pure, all buddha-lands are pure.

If we should be blessed by some great reward, such as fame or fortune, it’s the fruit of a seed planted by us in the past.

To give up yourself without regret is the greatest charity.

If you use your mind to look for a Buddha, you won’t see the Buddha.

To have a body is to suffer.

The mind is always present. You just don’t see it.

People who don’t see their own nature and imagine they can practice thoughtlessness all the time are liars and fools.

Everything good and bad comes from your own mind. To find something beyond the mind is impossible.

To see nothing is to perceive the Way, and to understand nothing is to know the Dharma, because seeing is neither seeing nor not seeing, and because understanding is neither understanding nor not understanding.

As mortals, we’re ruled by conditions, not by ourselves.

Refraining from all evil, not clinging to birth and death, working in deep compassion for all sentient beings, respecting those over you and pitying those below you, without any detesting or desiring, worrying or lamentation – this is what is called Buddha. Do not search beyond it.

One clings to life although there is nothing to be called life; another clings to death although there is nothing to be called death. In reality, there is nothing to be born; consequently, there is nothing to perish.

Man is only a moral being because he lives in society, since morality consists in solidarity with the group, and varies according to that solidarity. Cause all social life to vanish, and moral life would vanish at the same time, having no object to cling to.

No man can cause more grief than that one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancestors.

A fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he’s already got. He’ll cling to trouble he’s used to before he’ll risk a change.

As drivers desert the city I find myself clinging more and more to my father’s belief that a man without a car is not really a man.

When we see beyond self, we no longer cling to happiness. And when we stop clinging, we can begin to be happy.

You should know both the universal and the personal, the realm of forms and the freedom to not cling to them.