There is absolutely no point in clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, and healing the sick if it is just that they may live to be naked, hungry, and sick again, or live merely to be able to do the same for others.

Respect ethical tradition not because is is sacrosanct but because it is the only way of being in communication with others.

If there is anything to be learned from history, it is that scoldings, warnings, and preachings are a complete ethical failure... they only confirm and ingrain the attitudes which keep us at war.

Psychotherapy and liberation are completed in the moment when shame and guilt collapse, when the organism is no longer compelled to defend itself for being an oganism.

The high art of a true Bodhisattva is possible only for him who has gone beyond all need for self-justification, for so long as there is something to prove, some ax to grind, there is no dance.

We have 16th century personalities in the world of 20th century concepts because social conventions lag far behind the flight of theoretical knowledge.

Tao is not pursuing any purpose, and therefore is not meeting any difficulty.

symptoms... say, anxiety, migraine, depression, alcoholism, phobia, or lethargy enable the person to control others without accepting responsibility for doing so.

one is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious

When looking at the external world as a mirror, we may exclaim with amazement, 'Why, that's me!'

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.

Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy.

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day.

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.