“The ultimate truth is like the flavour of an apple which you can’t see with the eye or hear with the ear.”

One man watches a river flow by. If he does not wish it to flow, to change ceaselessly in accord with its nature, he will suffer great pain.

The heart is just the heart; thoughts and feelings are just thoughts and feelings. Let things be just as they are.

Another man understands that nature of the river is to change constantly, regardless of his likes and dislikes, and therefore he does not suffer.

Trying to run away from suffering is actually to run toward it.

Hear the bird’s song then let go. If you know nature, you’ll know truth. If you know truth, you’ll know nature.

If you have time to be mindful, you have time to meditate.

If you let go a little you will have a little happiness.

When one does not understand death, life can be very confusing.

What’s so great about brightness? My flashlight has it. It can’t help us rid ourselves of our suffering.

Try to be mindful, and let things take their natural course. Then your mind will become still in any surroundings, like a clear forest pool.

The meditator simply knows them, they don’t enter his mind. That is, he has no clinging. He is simply the experiencer.

To define Buddhism without a lot of words and phrases, we can simply say, ‘Don’t cling or hold on to anything. Harmonize with actuality, with things as they are.’

If we practise like this and develop mindfulness continuously, wisdom arises quickly and this is a fast way of practice.

We protect virtue so that virtue will protect us.

Proper effort is not the effort to make something particular happen. It is the effort to be aware and awake each moment, the effort to overcome laziness and merit, the effort to make each activity of our day meditation.

If we see suffering then we don’t have suffering.

It is amazing how many hints and guides and intuitions for living come to the sensitive person who has ears to hear what his body is saying.

It is easy to sympathize at a distance,’ said an old gentleman with a beard. ‘I value more the kind word that is spoken close to my ear.

How can one come to possess great faith? Now listen, here is the answer to that: First, the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. Faith must grow by soil, moisture, and exercise.

The nineteenth century lynching mob cuts off ears, toes, and fingers, strips off flesh, and distributes portions of the body as souvenirs among the crowd.

I’m very specific about scripts that I like. I don’t have a master plan or, like, a game plan. I don’t have a chart that I’m following or anything like that. I’m very much playing it by ear.

Certain things just happen and it’s undeniable, you just go that way. But I don’t have a specific path I’m following, I’m just playing it by ear.

Left ear, I wear four earrings. The four is symbolic of the four seasons, spring, winter, summer and fall, the four directions, north, east, south and west, the four gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

I just got an ear for the kind of things I like.