“Do not be a bodhisattva, do not be an arahant, do not be anything at all. If you are a bodhisattva, you will suffer, if you are an arahant, you will suffer, if you are anything at all, you will suffer.”

We should conquer ourselves, rather than conquer others. Whether coming or going, standing, sitting or lying down, our mind should be focused in this way.

Know and watch your heart. It’s pure but emotions come to colour it. So let your mind be like a tightly woven net to catch emotions and feelings that come, and investigate them before you react.

We say that to ‘give up all evil and to develop the good’ is the heart of the Buddha’s teaching.

If we want to really see the Buddha, we should observe his virtuous qualities.

The forest is peaceful, why aren’t you? You hold on to things causing your confusion. Let nature teach you.

We don’t meditate to see heaven, but to end suffering.

If you haven’t wept deeply, you haven’t begun to meditate.

We have limited time in our life, therefore we should try to teach ourselves, not to teach others.

Investigate yourself to find the truth – inside, not outside. Knowing yourself is most important.

Why do we have time to breathe? Because we see the importance of the breath.

If suffering arises you must contemplate right there, you don’t have to run away.

A woman wanted to know how to deal with anger. I asked when anger arose whose anger it was. She said it was hers.

The Dharma Path is to keep walking forward. But the true Dharma has no going forward, no going backward, and no standing still.

Don’t fall for it. Whenever the mind is happy or sad, don’t fall for it. Its all a deception.

The forms of the world have their place, but in another way, there is nothing there. To be free, we need to respect both of these truths.

All religions are like different cars all moving in the same direction. People who don’t see it have no light in their hearts.

But to feel that there was feeling denied me, that the very breath of life itself was beyond my reach, that more than anything else hurt, wounded me. I had a new hunger.

Anything which must be understood by millions of people is so hopelessly divorced from how it is that it becomes a form of fiction.

I don’t think there’s anything you can do this way or that way to change anything.

I don’t believe in things like that – fairies or brownies or magic or anything. It’s old-fashioned.’ ‘

You do not have to force yourself to do anything at all. There is a continual exchange, a continual dance. It is similar to the sun shining and plants growing. The sun has no desire to create the vegetation; plants simply react to sunlight and the situation develops naturally.

Things are always different than what they might be…If you wait for them to change, you will never do anything.

I didn’t aim at anything except good music.

If a man confessed anything on his death bed, it was the truth; for no man could stare death in the face and lie.