“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”

If your mind is happy then you are happy anywhere you go. When wisdom awakens within you, you will see Truth wherever you look.

The Dhamma is revealing itself in every moment, but only when the mind is quiet can we understand what it is saying, for the Dhamma teaches without words.

If you haven’t cried deeply a number of times, your meditation hasn’t really begun.

There are two kinds of suffering. There is the suffering you run away from, which follows you everywhere. And there is the suffering you face directly, and so become free.

This is the nature of the mind. We must find our own practice and persevere.

The sound is just sound, why should you go and grab it? You see that actually it was you who went out and disturbed the sound.

Why do we suffer? Because we stepped on it. So the suffering comes from us.

It is not found in a forest or on a hilltop, nor is it given by a teacher. Where you experience suffering, you can also find freedom from suffering.

Practicing meditation is just like breathing. While working we breathe, while sleeping we breathe, while sitting down we breathe…

Of course there are dozens of meditation techniques, but it all comes down to this – just let it all be. Step over here where it is cool, out of the battle. Why not give it a try?

Even if the water is falling right on it, it only touches the outside and not the inside. In this way the bowl will never get full.

Sati is life. Whenever we don’t have sati, when we are heedless, it’s as if we are dead.

If you are still following your likes and dislikes, you have not even begun to practise Dhamma.

Wisdom is in yourself, just like a sweet ripe mango is already in a young green one.

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.

The awareness of our own strength makes us modest.

Example is the softest and least invidious way of commanding.

Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat.

The most disgraceful cause of the scarcity [of remedies] is that even those who know them do not want to point them out, as if they were going to lose what they pass on to others.

I don’t know how long a child will remain utterly static in front of the television, but my guess is that it could be well into their thirties.

You think you might know something about yourself or why you act or react in certain ways and then you come to new information and suddenly you see your past and your present in a completely different light.

You have to know what you want to get it.

And while the ice was melting to form a flood in which I threatened to drown I awoke one afternoon to find that my first northern winter had set.