“In the face of impermanence, if your next thought is good, this is what we call the realization body.”

This building we’re in has doors and windows. If we close the doors and windows, we can’t get out.

Reading texts is no substitute for meditation and practicing Zen. If you read a book about a place, and you want to go there, you don’t keep reading the book.

When you are free of form and not confused, you are focused. To be free of form externally is ‘Zen.’ Not to be confused internally is ‘meditation.’ External Zen and internal meditation, this is what we mean by ‘Zen meditation.

When you’re blind to your own nature, the Buddha is an ordinary being. When you’re aware of your own nature, an ordinary being is the Buddha.

There’s not even any leaving. What we see are flowers in the sky, the moon in the water. As for the meditative powers of Zen masters like Hsu-yun, sometimes it’s useful to meditate and sometimes it isn’t.

Ants have the most complicated social organization on earth next to humans.

Our cellar home had a kitchen and a combination bedroom and half bath, which meant we had a sink next to the bed.

Staying in the moment is not worrying about the outcome but just focusing on the process on the next shot.

I prefer to focus on what is coming next and I am really looking forward to it.

I left Mainz after 18 years and thought, ‘Next time, I will work with a little less of my heart.’ I said that because we all cried for a week.

My whole family are hams. They’re storytellers and everyone outdoes the next one.

And when you don’t have to talk to the person next to you, that’s real clean. Takes a certain thing not to try to keep anything up, not to have to entertain one another.

The next time you have a thought… let it go.