“When you’re blind to your own nature, the Buddha is an ordinary being. When you’re aware of your own nature, an ordinary being is the Buddha.”

In the face of impermanence, if your next thought is good, this is what we call the realization body.

This building we’re in has doors and windows. If we close the doors and windows, we can’t get out.

Reading texts is no substitute for meditation and practicing Zen. If you read a book about a place, and you want to go there, you don’t keep reading the book.

When you are free of form and not confused, you are focused. To be free of form externally is ‘Zen.’ Not to be confused internally is ‘meditation.’ External Zen and internal meditation, this is what we mean by ‘Zen meditation.

There’s not even any leaving. What we see are flowers in the sky, the moon in the water. As for the meditative powers of Zen masters like Hsu-yun, sometimes it’s useful to meditate and sometimes it isn’t.

All Buddhas preach emptiness. Why? Because they wish to crush the concrete ideas of the students. If a student even clings to an idea of emptiness, he betrays all Buddhas.

Trying to find a buddha or enlightenment is like trying to grab space.

Unless you see your nature, all this talk about cause & effect is nonsense. Buddhas don’t practice nonsense.

To find a Buddha all you have to do is see your nature.

Buddha means awareness, the awareness of body and mind that prevents evil from arising in either.

There are those who, attracted by grass, flowers, mountains, and waters, flow into the Buddha Way.

People like what is not true and they don’t like what is true.

The mind is the Buddha, and the Buddha is the mind.