Look at this window: it is nothing but a hole in the wall, but because of it the whole room is full of light. So when the faculties are empty, the heart is full of light.
To exercise no-thought and rest in nothing is the first step toward resting in Tao. To start from nowhere and follow no road is the first step toward attaining Tao.
If you have insight, you use your inner eye, your inner ear, to pierce to the heart of things, and have no need of intellectual knowledge.
To be truly ignorant, be content with your own knowledge.
Forget the years, forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home!
The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror.
Life comes from the earth and life returns to the earth.
To examine oneself makes good use of sight.
Take care of your body, then the rest will automatically become stronger.
Words are for meaning: when you’ve got the meaning, you can forget the words.
He who does his work like a machine grows a heart like a machine and he who carries the heart of a machine in his breast loses his simplicity. He who has lost his simplicity becomes unsure in the strivings of his soul.
Your preciousness lies in your essence; it cannot be lost by anything that happens.
The Portal of God is nonexistence. All things sprang from nonexistence. Existence could not make existence existence. It must have proceeded from nonexistence, and nonexistence and nothing are one. Herein is the abiding place of the sage.
Right is not right; so is not so. If right were really right it would differ so clearly from not right that there would be no need for argument. If so were really so, it would differ so clearly from not so that there would be no need for argument.
During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream.
When deeds and words are in accord, the whole world is transformed.
The enlightened attention rejects nothing nor welcomes anything-like a mirror it responds equally to all.
Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature.
But you now, you wear your soul on your sleeve, exhausting your energy, propping yourself up on a tree, mumbling, or bent over your desk, asleep. Heaven gives you a form and you wear it out by pointless argument.
Are you and I perchance caught up in a dream from which we have not yet awakened?