“Year by year, the monkey’s mask reveals the monkey.”

April’s air stirs in Willow-leaves, a butterfly Floats and balances.

There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon.

I hope to have gathered To repay your kindness The willow leaves Scattered in the garden.

A flute with no holes is not a flute.

Go to the object. Leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Do not impose yourself on the object. Become one with the object. Plunge deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there.

Learn how to listen as things speak for themselves.

A thicket of summer grass / Is all that remains / Of the dreams of ancient warriors.

For this lovely bowl let us arrange these flowers since there is no rice.

Old dark sleepy pool… Quick unexpected frog Goes plop! Watersplash!

Old pond, frog jumps in – plop.

The journey itself is my home.

With every gust of wind, the butterfly changes its place on the willow.

Harvest moon: around the pond I wander and the night is gone.

Do not resemble me-Never be like a musk melon Cut in two identical halves.

Traveler’s heart. Never settled long in one place. Like a portable fire.

First snow-falling-on the half-finished bridge.

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in it’s gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.

History is a people’s memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

We don’t let animals suffer, so why humans?

Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.

Humans are social animals. We seek belonging. We feel safer in a tribe than alone. But not all tribes are healthy.

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.

Man is the cruelest animal.