“When we really start to take a look at who we think we are… we start to see that while we may have various thoughts, beliefs, and identities, they do not individually or collectively tell us who we are.”

What will carry us into living freedom is not the holding of attention so much as the holding of appreciation.

There’s something more to life than what we see on the surface.

We must become expressions of, not consumers of, realization.

It authenticates itself. Something inside us knows. This…is what has been sought for, longed for, looked for. This is it. Usually, it’s not what we expected.

True Meditation is the space in which everything gets revealed, everything gets seen, everything gets experienced. And as such, it lets go of itself. We don’t even let go. It lets go of itself.

Embrace suffering, and you transform your relationship with what causes you to suffer, as well as your relationship with suffering itself.

We think there’s someplace other than here to get to—that’s what drives the whole pursuit.

Meditation is not a technique to master; it is the highest form of prayer, a naked act of love and effortless surrender into the silent abyss beyond all knowing

In true meditation the emphasis is on being awareness; not on being aware of objects, but on resting as primordial awareness itself. Primordial awareness is the source in which all objects arise and subside.

The Buddha’s insight into the middle way is not simply about a balance between extremes. This conventional understanding misses the deeper revelation of the middle way as being the very nature of unexcelled enlightenment.

Many Sages have said, “Your world is a dream. You’re living in an illusion.” They’re referring to this world of the mind and the way we believe our thoughts about reality.

One doesn’t stay in a state of nirvana by hiding from difficulties. You stay in nirvana by lavishing nirvana on everyone you meet, by giving it away as fast as you receive it.

When you abide and accept everything completely and fully, you automatically go beyond.

True sincerity reveals a powerful form of clarity and discernment that is necessary in order to perceive yourself honestly without flinching or being held captive by your conditioned mind’s judgments and defensiveness.

When we see the world through our thoughts, we stop experiencing life as it really is and others as they really are. When I have a thought about you, that’s something I’ve created. I’ve turned you into an idea.

Only something as insane as human beings would ever asked themselves if ‘I’m good.’ You don’t find oak trees having existential crisis. ‘I feel so rotten about myself. I don’t produce as much acorns as the one next to me.’

To see things as you see them or to see things differently—until you have given the whole world its freedom—you’ll never have your freedom.

So for too long Americans take liberty as granted. We think we are in the safe hand, the democracy and the liberty, which is not true. And it can be even getting much worse than today.

There’s no single artwork I even want to mention or that I can even really think about it to have any feeling, to be proud of it.

I think Israel will think one thousands times before invading Gaza.

But personally, I don’t think my work and my understanding of art is so much related to being Chinese, but the character of that. Maybe it’s beyond my own consciousness.

If it’s possible, I will have some noodles in the morning and start talking to people, start to think about a few things in my head.

I think it’s quite narrow-minded. There wasn’t much encouragement or opportunities for any artist – not just Chinese artists.

Whenever you aren’t manipulating your experience, you’re meditating. As soon as you meditate because you think you should, you’re controlling your experience again, and you’ve squeezed all the value out of your meditation.