Buddhism

Nothing is briefer than this life, disintegrating moment by moment.

Lovers find secret places inside this violent world where they make transactions with beauty.

Drop the idea of becoming someone, because you are already a masterpiece. You cannot be improved. You have only to come to it, to know it, to realize it.

I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness. I am the Now. I Am.

Be — don’t try to become

To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe — to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it — is a wonder beyond words.

Before Enlightenment you think, “I must chop wood, I must carry water”. Afterwards wood gets chopped, water gets carried but it’s nothing to do with you. It just happens.

The flower is not concerned about tomorrow. It doesn’t plan. It doesn’t worry about death; Nor does it make effort to smell beautifully. the flower teaches being —Being what one is.

We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.

The practice of Zen is to eat, breathe, cook, carry water, and scrub the toilet — to infuse every act of body, speech, and mind — with mindfulness, to illuminate every leaf and pebble, every heap of garbage, every path that leads to our mind’s return home.