“If you want to understand suffering you must look into the situation at hand.”

Then we don’t have to celebrate it or let anybody know about it, simply let the mind have firm confidence in the goodness and keep going like this.

Looking for peace is like looking for a turtle with a mustache: You won’t be able to find it. But when your heart is ready, peace will come looking for you.

Just know what is happening in your mind – not happy or sad about it, not attached. If you suffer see it, know it, and be empty. It’s like a letter – you have to open it before you can know what’s in it.

Difficult or easy, the Buddha said not to be heedless. Just that–don’t be heedless. Why? Because life is not certain.

There’s no need to explain anything at length. Let go of love and hate and let things be. That’s all that I do in my own practice.

There are people who are born and die and never once are aware of their breath going in and out of their body. That’s how far away they live from themselves

We will come to understand that everything in the world is our teacher.

When we gain some understanding we need to chew on it again so that we see it for ourselves with certainty: paccattam.

Happiness and suffering do not depend on being poor or rich, they depend on having the right or wrong understanding in our mind.

Steady practice is keeping mindful in every posture, whether sitting, walking, standing or lying down.

To give up doing evil is more important than making merit.

The ladle is in the soup pot every day, but it doesn’t know the taste of the soup. You must reflect and meditate.

These days people don’t search for the Truth. People study simply in order to find knowledge necessary to make a living.

Isn’t it wonderful how the sky can take that dirty water and change it into pure, clean water? Your mind can do the same with your defilements if you let it.

People go through life blindly, ignoring death like revellers at a party feasting on fine foods. They ignore that later they will have to go to the toilet, so they do not bother to find out where there is one.

If you let go completely you will have complete peace.

I’ve had my run in with trouble. Fortunately, you know, one slap on the hand is usually the last time for me… I learned my lesson.

I was singing in a mall, and I picked a girl to come up onstage with me. As I was grabbing her hand, I fell off the stage. It felt like I was in the air forever, flying like Superman.

If you’re waiting around for something to be handed to you or win the lottery, chances are nothing is ever going to go down, you know, so you got to make it happen on your own.

Find my hand in the darkness and if we cannot find the light, we will always make our own.

Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.

Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.

With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish ’twere done. Not till the hours of light return All we have built do we discern.

How many movies do you see when you can say this director really knew what film he wanted to make? I can count them on the fingers of one hand.