According to Master Linji, if, while walking or eating or going about your day, you can create even just one flash of mindfulness, that’s good enough.

To be happy is to be understood, to be loved, and to have the power to understand and love others.

don’t close any door. Open all the doors. Don’t just commit yourself to one idea of happiness.

You allow it to be, you embrace it, and you help it transform.

Compassion can protect you better even than guns and bombs. With compassion in your heart, you will not react in fear or anger and you will attract much less danger to yourself.

I remember at first thinking that I need to access the present moment with my mind. But I’ve slowly understood that I can access it most directly with the senses: the smell of the woods, the edge of the breeze, the sound of the rain, the rumble of humanity through the asphalt.

We live in the world and what is so-called “worldly” can become spiritual once we bring the energy of awakening to it.

If in the twenty-four hours of your day you have five minutes of peace, ease, and freedom, that’s not too bad.

When you’re caught in the idea that this body is you, or this mind is you, you underestimate your value. But, when you can free yourself from the notion of self and see your body and mind as a stream of being of all your ancestors, you’ll begin to treat your body and mind with more respect.