“It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.”

I don’t mind what happens. That is the essence of inner freedom. It is a timeless spiritual truth: release attachment to outcomes, deep inside yourself, you’ll feel good no matter what.

Without knowing yourself, there is no peace.

Knowledge, idea, belief stands in the way of wisdom.

The mind has to be empty to see clearly.

You want to be loved because you do not love; but the moment you love, it is finished, you are no longer inquiring whether or not somebody loves you.

Be a light unto oneself,

Discipline does not mean suppression and control, nor is it adjustment to a pattern or ideology. It means a mind that sees ‘what is’ and learns from ‘what was’.

No book can teach you about yourself, no psychologist, none of the professors or philosophers. What they can teach you is what they think you are or what they think you should be.

All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man.

One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.

To ask the ‘right’ question is far more important than to receive the answer. The solution of a problem lies in the understanding of the problem; the answer is not outside the problem, it is in the problem.

To meditate is to observe yourself, for you are totally responsible for your body, mind, thought.

Throughout life, from childhood, from school until we die, we are taught to compare ourselves with another; yet when I compare myself with another I am destroying myself.

What you believe you experience.

The fundamental factor of self-deception is this constant desire to be something in this world and in the world hereafter.

The moment I am aware that I am aware, I am not aware. Awareness means the observer is not.

Fatigue, discomfort, discouragement are merely symptoms of effort.

The peace that we’re after lies somewhere beyond personality, beyond the perception of others, beyond invention and disguise, even beyond effort itself.

If one is to be called a liar, one may as well make an effort to deserve the name.

Japan should aim at is a society in which the efforts of people are rewarded.

If you put that effort in, you’ll get what you want.

Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory.

I think I hate it here because there is no love here anymore. I regret the effort I desperately made here.

The reason some portraits don’t look true to life is that some people make no effort to resemble their pictures.