Attention leads to immortality. Carelessness leads to death. Those who pay attention will not die, while the careless are as good as dead already.
Foolish, ignorant people indulge in careless lives, whereas a clever man guards his attention as his most precious possession.
Don’t indulge in careless behaviour. Don’t be the friend of sensual pleasures. He who meditates attentively attains abundant joy.
Careful amidst the careless, amongst the sleeping wide-awake, the intelligent man leaves them all behind, like a race-horse does a mere hack.
Death carries off a man busy picking flowers with an besotted mind, like a great flood does a sleeping village.
Just as one can make a lot of garlands from a heap of flowers, so man, subject to birth and death as he is, should make himself a lot of good karma.
Sandalwood, tagara, lotus, jasmine – the fragrance of virtue is unrivalled by such kinds of perfume.
A fool who recognises his own ignorance is thereby in fact a wise man, but a fool who considers himself wise – that is what one really calls a fool.
Even if a fool lived with a wise man all his life, he would still not recognise the truth, like a wooden spoon cannot recognise the flavour of the soup.
Like fresh milk a bad deed does not turn at once. It follows a fool scorching him like a smouldering fire.
Journey over, sorrowless, freed in every way, and with all bonds broken – for such a man there is no more distress.
The recollected go forth to lives of renunciation. They take no pleasure in a fixed abode. Like wild swans abandoning a pool, they leave one resting place after another.
He whose inflowing thoughts are dried up, who is unattached to food, whose dwelling place is an empty and imageless release – the way of such a person is hard to follow, like the path of birds through the sky.
Neither my life of luxury in the palace -nor- my life as ascetic in the forest were ways to enlightenment.
Pay no attention to the faults of others, things done or left undone by others. Consider only what by oneself is done or left undone.
My whole life, I never spoke a single-word.
There have been many Buddhas before me and will be many Buddhas in the future.
All living beings have Buddha nature and can become Buddhas.
We are the same as plants, as trees, as other people, as the rain that falls. We consist of that which is around us, we are the same as everything.
If we destroy something around us we destroy ourselves. If we cheat another, we cheat ourselves.