Without [hearing] the transmundane message, How can lifetimes of madness be stopped?
(Fa-ta in The Sutra of Hui-neng)
Karmic evil is from the beginning without real form; It is the result of delusional thought and invertedness. Mind-nature is from the beginning pure, But as for this world, there is no person of truth.
(Shinran)
Rely on the Dharma, not on a human being.
(Shakyamuni)
The Pure Land is easy to reach, but very few actually go there.
(The Larger Sutra)
When Shinran said, “I am a hell-dweller,” he was born in the Pure Land.
(Nobuo Haneda)
This bliss has no subject that experiences it, yet there is no one who does not experience it.
(Hui-neng)
What is not superficial is unclean.
(Cioran)
House-builder, you’re seen!
(Shakyamuni)
Many people misunderstand liberation as getting out of something.
(Shuichi Maida)
Besides the freedom to be evil, no other freedom whatsoever is given to us.
(Shuichi Maida)
In this world, impermanence, the one and only truth, exists. That’s all.
(Shuichi Maida)
Idiots, trying to get out of the threefold world! Where will you go?
(Lin-chi)
Buddhas are those who are greatly awakened to their deludedness.
(Dogen)
Ama nesciri, says the Imitation of Christ. Love to be unknown. We are happy with ourselves and with the world only when we conform to this precept.
(Cioran)
Satori means waking up from group stupidity.
(Kodo Sawaki)
Why should we linger in our mind?
(Dogen)
All phenomena arise continuously while being nothing whatsoever…
(“Samantabhadra” in The Tantra of Heaped Jewels))
True religion is simply recognizing the fact that we are already free.
(Shuichi Maida)
The negation in question is, to the end, the negation of the nature of attachment and not the negation of the nature of existence.
(Yasuda Rijin)
Don’t let yourself be taken in by any philosophy or any group. Don’t bother with anything as dimwitted as people.
(Kodo Sawaki)
Wisdom liberates, not practices. . . . Human wisdom is ignorance.
(Nobuo Haneda)
Being fallible, one takes refuge in fallibility.
(Dogen)
I have 84,000 deluded thoughts in one day.
(Honen)
Beginningless time and the present moment are the same.
(Huang Po)
Truth is an instant flash. That’s the only important thing. Even if you don’t remember how it came to you, that’s all right. This flash is the only important thing.
(Haya Akegarasu)
The core of Buddhism…is saying [to us], “Why are you so hesitant and reserved?”
(Shuichi Maida interpreting the Larger Sutra)
Liberation “is a straight line not a circle.”
(Nobuo Haneda)
The basic cause of suffering [is] ignorance of the truth of impermanence.
(Nobuo Haneda on Shakyamuni’s awakening)
My denomination is the Akegarasu School. The only follower is myself. There is no need whatsoever to spread it… In the heavens and on the earth my aloneness is noble.
(Haya Akegarasu)
A thief who has a straightforward mind is more worthy of respect than a person who simply copies the deeds of the clever. Because I can spit on the artificial wiseman, I want to shake hands with the thief who is himself.
(Haya Akegarasu)
Never preach even if you die!
(Manshi Kiyozawa)
When we base our actions on the premise that we are ‘evil persons’ — beings deserving annihilation — there is nothing whatever to be accomplished. How terrible it is that people in this world honor ‘getting something accomplished!’ Do they consider it praiseworthy for an evil person to accomplish evil?
(Shuichi Maida)
When you know that every problem is only a false problem, you are dangerously close to salvation.
(E.M. Cioran)
How exhausting to cling to notions of self and others / in the sameness where superiority and inferiority cannot be!
What anxiety to cling to the duality of success and failure! / Atone in the spaciousness of the pure pleasure of sameness.
(Guru Chowang, translated by Keith Dowman in The Flight of the Garuda)
The goal of religion does not exist in the peace of mind of an individual. Those people in our time who misunderstand religion in such a manner are just privatizing the absolute power beyond the self.
(Kitaro Nishida)
When the issue of our individual liberation ceases to be an issue, that is our liberation.
(Shuichi Maida)
Those who should be students are behaving as teachers.
(Shuichi Maida)
No meaning is the meaning.
(Shinran)
You must understand fully what self-power is.
(Shinran) Obstructions of karmic evil turn into virtues; it is like the relation of ice and water: the more ice, the more water; the more obstructions, the more virtues.
(Shinran)
The great practice, for us, is the self-awareness that effort is unnecessary. Through it, one is given absolute fulfillment that requires nothing else.
(Yasuda Rijin)
Even if the whole world is on fire, Be sure to pass through it to hear the Dharma
(The Larger Sutra)
… there is not the slightest difference between two individuals, one a spiritual person whose familiarity with emptiness increases continually and the other a person who has never entertained the idea of emptiness for even an instant.
(The Heaped Jewels, quoted by Longchenpa)
The mahasattva Nagarjuna [appeared] in this world to crush the views of being and nonbeing…
(Shinran)
The nothingness of Buddhism became my teacher.
(Shuichi Maida)
No matter how seriously words are uttered by human beings, there is nothing significant in them.
(Shuichi Maida)
Just one little slip, you switch the Buddha mind for thoughts.
(Bankei)
The ego self and dualistic thinking are synonymous.
(Nobuo Haneda)
Aside from deluded ideas, there is nothing that can be called the mind.
(Genshin Sozu)
“Deluded ideas” are the form that the truth of impermanence takes in the subjective human self.
(Shuichi Maida)
Life...is a single contradiction.
(Shuichi Maida) Dualistic thinking and [spiritual] practice are like twin brothers.
(Nobuo Haneda)
Too great a facility with words Lacks surprise Lacks absurdity
(Nicanor Parra)
It’s better to feel than to verbalize
(Nicanor Parra)
All phenomena, always unborn, are the Thus-gone-one ...
(Rongzom Chozang)
I do not borrow light from another light ...
(Avadhuta Gita)
Why are you putting a head on top of your head?
(Lin-chi)
Rely on wisdom, not on the working of the mind.
(Prajnaparamitasutra)
Even the mind of an ordinary being Is by nature complete purification.
(Prajnaparamitasutra)
It’s a very grave error to take the world seriously true seriousness is comic
(Nicanor Parra)
An unreleased event is impossible.
(Longchenpa) Seeing that one cannot see the absence of things is true seeing...
(Shen hui)
[Suchness] cannot be seen by a selective focus.
(Vairotsana)
Is there a Buddha other than this Buddha? (Honen, pointing to the empty space in the room) Feeling good [about our actions] doesn’t mean anything in Buddhism. Our good actions are “mixed with poison.”
(Nobuo Haneda)
Since everything is without substance, sustain the joke of the absurd.
(Longchenpa)
It requires no effort for us to become selfless.
(Manshi Kiyozawa)
Buddhism is nothing but seeing the mistake we are making.
(Nobuo Haneda)
We’ve got to stop torturing ourselves.
(Nobuo Haneda)
Consciousness is incomprehensible to itself. By realizing that, at that point, consciousness becomes at ease.
(Yasuda Rijin)
See the false as the false. This must go on all the time.
(Nisargadatta)
What you are looking for does not exist.
(U. G. Krishnamurti)
Reason arbitrates between instincts, but it uses the very same instincts as primary criteria in its arbitration.
(Carlo Rovelli)
Time is a river that carries you away; but you are the river.
(Martin Amis)
My goal is to contradict everything I’ve said previously.
(U. G. Krishnamurti)
There’s no such thing as humility, only degrees of pride.
(Zen wisdom quoted by Wei Wu Wei)
What’s wrong with right now unless you think about it?
(Sailor Bob Adamson)
Here comes the instant with no umbrella...
(Pablo de Rokha)
All teachers must be destroyed.
(U. G. Krishnamurti)
All matters without exception are lies and gibberish. Only the nembutsu is true and real.