"The ultimate purpose of Zen,' I remembered the roshi telling me, 'is not in the going away from the world but in the coming back. Zen is not just a matter of gaining enlightenment; it's a matter of acting in a world of love and compassion."
-Pico Iyer
"This is what enlightenment is all about - a deep understanding that there is no problem. Then, with no problem to solve, what will you do? Immediately you start living. You will eat, you will sleep, you will love, you will work, you will have a chit-chat, you will sing, you will dance - what else is there to do?"
-Osho
"Enlightenment comes up first and it means to just be present. If you want to be what you want to be, be present. Just stand up straight, with stability, and then simultaneously your effort turns into practice. Then from this practice the teaching will come up later." -Dainin Katagiri
"Gain is delusion; loss is enlightenment." -Kodo Sawaki
“Man’s mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.” -Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Nourish your eye and spirit with inspiring things. They will bloom with your tending.” -Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy
“The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.” -
Pema Chödrön
“Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with those who are reckless with yours.”
-Mary Theresa Schmich
"Look at everything as if you were seeing it either for the first or last time."
-Betty Smith
“Gratitude is not only the greatest of the virtues but the parent of all others.”
-Cicero
"You’ll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut."
-Theodor Seuss Geisel
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
-Oscar Wilde
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” -George Eliot
"If you want to be happy, be."
-Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy
"Nothing, physical or mental, can give you freedom. You are free once you understand that your bondage is of your own making and you cease forging the chains that bind you." -Nisargadatta Maharaj
“The Great Way has no gate; there are a thousand paths to it.” -Wumen Huikai
"Gain is delusion; loss is enlightenment." -Kodo Sawaki
"All the things that truly matter — beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace — arise from beyond the mind."
-Eckhart Tolle
"A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless when facing them." -Rabindranath Tagore
