Inner Peace

“Everything that happens is either endurable or not.”

“The best revenge is not to be like that.”

“The highest good is like water.”

“Good friends, in this teaching of mine, from ancient times up to the present, all have established no-thought as the main doctrine, non-form as the substance, and non-abiding as the basis.”

“To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away.”

“Zazen is the gateway of total repose and bliss. The body and mind of all buddhas are the body and mind of all beings. Zazen is neither a technique nor a method. It is simply the dharma gate of joyful ease.”

“Once upon a time, I, Zhuangzi, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Zhuangzi. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”

“Time is not separate from you, and you are not separate from time. You must realize that time is you, and you are time.”

“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

“Radical acceptance is the courage to let things be as they are. It is not resignation. It is the willingness to see clearly what is happening, without the veil of judgment, and to respond from that clarity.”

“The trance of unworthiness is the feeling that something is wrong with me, that I am not enough. It is a trance because it is not the truth — it is a spell cast by conditioning, by fear, by forgetting who we are.”

“Happily we live, we who possess nothing; feeders on joy shall we be, like the radiant gods.”

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.”

“You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”

“Think of what you have rather than what you lack. Of the things you have, select the best and then reflect how eagerly you would have sought them if you did not have them.”

“We should have wife, children, goods, and, above all, health — but we must not bind ourselves to them so strongly that our happiness depends on them.”

“Failure is a secret ingredient of a wise life. It is the thing that teaches us what we need to know, if we can stay with it instead of running away.”

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be constantly in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh.”

“A happy life is one that is in harmony with its own nature.”

“Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally.”

“A special transmission outside the scriptures; no dependence on words and letters; direct pointing at the mind of man; seeing into one's nature and attaining Buddhahood.”

“All conditioned dharmas are like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow, like dew, like a flash of lightning — and should be viewed as such.”

“The Way never acts, yet nothing is left undone. If rulers could hold on to it, all things would transform on their own. If they transformed and wished to act, I would restrain them with the simplicity of the nameless. For in simplicity lies no desire, and in stillness all under heaven finds its own rest.”

“Philosophy is the medicine of the soul, and the sorrow that is understood is the sorrow that can be borne: the grief is the judgment, and the judgment can be examined — the consolation is in the understanding.”

“The body can be hurt, but the soul is untouched: the harm that reaches the body ends at the body, and the person who knows this is free — for no one can injure what they cannot reach.”

“When the hour comes, depart quietly: death is the natural completion, and the person who has lived in agreement with nature does not cling to the banquet when the dinner is done.”

“Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will be serene.”

“It is not the things themselves that disturb us, but our judgments about them: death is nothing terrible — else it would have appeared so to Socrates — but the judgment that death is terrible is the terrible thing.”

“Some things are up to us and some are not. Up to us are opinion, impulse, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever is our own doing; not up to us are body, property, reputation, office, and, in a word, whatever is not our own doing.”

“For this reason we call pleasure the beginning and the end of the blessed life. For we recognize it as the first and natural good, and from it we begin every choice and avoidance. We return to it, judging every good by the standard of pleasure as our criterion. And because this is the first and innate good, for this reason we do not choose every pleasure, but sometimes we pass over many pleasures when greater discomfort follows for us.”

“You may leave life at any moment. Have this freedom in your mind, in your acts, in your thoughts. Let death be present to your thoughts, and let it teach you to live: not in fear, but in the fullness of the present.”

“Expect nothing from the world, and you will not be disappointed by it: the person who has released the expectation has released the disappointment, and the person who has released the fear has released the slavery.”

“The wrong that others do harms the doer, not the soul of the wronged: no one can harm your character but yourself, and the injury that reaches the body ends at the body.”

“Remember how long you have been putting off these things, and how often you have received an opportunity from the gods and not used it. Now it is time to realize that you are a part of the universe, that you exist for a short time, and that all things pass away quickly.”

“The mind is undisturbed by the impressions unless it assents to them: wipe out the impression, stop the pulling of the strings, and the mind is its own master.”

“You can retreat into yourself at any moment: the mind is the citadel that no one can storm, and the person who has fortified the inner life has found the refuge that no enemy, no fortune, and no calamity can take.”

“Confine yourself to the present: for the past is gone and the future is not yours, and the person who lives in the present lives the whole of life, because life is nothing but the present, lived well.”

“The daily remembrance of death is the discipline of life: the person who has rehearsed the end is free of the fear of it, and the person who is free of the fear is free to live.”

“Whatever is dependently co-arisen, that is explained to be emptiness. That, being a dependent designation, is itself the middle way.”

“The wise person cannot be conquered: the soul that has found its ground is not moved by the assaults of fortune, and the constancy of the inner life is the victory that no enemy can take.”

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficient measure to allow the accomplishment of the greatest things, if it were well invested. The final hour is not the only hour; each day is a life in miniature, and the person who has lived each day as a complete life has already died well.”

“Dry your tears, but do not harden your heart: the grief of the wise is felt without being mastered — the tears are human, and the despair is the judgment that can be corrected.”

“The soul should be always at rest and settled, serene and unruffled, holding itself in its own possession: this is what it is to be tranquil, and this is the reward of the well-governed life.”

“The dichotomy of control is the foundation of the modern practice: the discipline that returns the attention to what is ours, and the freedom that comes from the release of what is not.”

“Happiness resides not in possessions and not in gold, the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul.”

“That thing is called free which exists from the necessity of its own nature alone, and is determined to act by itself alone.”

“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.”