“As if some dreadful fate would overcome us if we were to face the pure light of truth and lay bare our fearful clinging to illusion.”

Silence and stillness are not states and therefore cannot be produced or created. Silence is the non-state in which all states arise and subside. Silence, stillness and awareness are not states and can never be perceived in their totality as objects.

If we would only see that all limitations are self imposed and chosen out of fear, we would leap at once.

When you inquire ‘Who am I?’ if you are honest, you’ll notice that it takes you right back to silence instantly. The brain doesn’t have an answer, so all of a sudden there is silence.

The truth is that you already are what you are seeking. You are looking for God with his eyes. I suggest you ask, “What’s ultimately behind this set of eyes?” Turn around to see what is looking.

Self-inquiry is a spiritually induced form of wintertime. It’s not about looking for a right answer so much as stripping away and letting you see what is not necessary, what you can do without, what you are without your leaves.

The goal of Buddhism is to create Buddhas, not Buddhists, as the goal of Christianity is to create Christs, not Christians.

Sincere and committed now, with absolute honesty and willingness to uncover and let go of any illusions that come between you and the realization of Reality.

If you resist confusion,you are always confused. We think that we resist certain states because they are there, but actually they are there because we resist them.

It is easy to imagine that the Buddha, the awakened one, is something or somewhere other than here or that awakening to reality will happen sometime other than now. But as long as we continue to think in terms of time we will deceive ourselves.

One Zen master said, The whole universe is my true personality. This is a very wonderful saying… If you want to see what you truly are, open the window, and everything you see is in fact the expression of your inner reality. Can you embrace all of it?

My experience of fundamental Truth is that it’s a place of extraordinary intelligence. It’s a place from which great intelligence arises. I call it a place of absolute infinite potential.

Often life is a frantic avoidance of the truth.

We don’t come to nirvana by avoiding samsara. We don’t come to clarity by avoiding confusion.

True meditation is letting go of manipulating our experience.

When you begin to become conscious, more aware, when your eyes begin to open, the first thing you see is how deluded you are and how much you’re holding onto that which makes you suffer. This is, in many ways, the most important step: Are you willing to be aware?

When someone says, ‘I love you,’ he is telling you about himself, not you. When someone says, ‘I hate you,’ she is telling you about herself, not you. World views are self views-literally.

I watch her blond head until it disappears around the bend, and I feel bare, like there’s nothing left to protect me against pain. Her absence stings worst of all.

The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved.

It is not a tool, although it can act like many tools. It is the first metamedium, and as such it has degrees of freedom for representation and expression never before encountered and as yet barely investigated.

What love lays bare in me is energy.

And the woman who could win the respect of man was often the woman who could knock him down with her bare fists and sit on him until he yelled for help.

I wouldn’t have believed it. I still barely do, truthfully. I’m so continually fortunate that I keep coming across these smart, interesting, creative people who pick me. It’s just stupendous.

Opportunity lives at the intersection of what people need tomorrow and can be just barely built today.

From ages 10 to 12 or so, I barely remember anything.