And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

-Dogen

Should you desire the great tranquility

Prepare to sweat.

-Hakuin

Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water, and when you’re tired go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand.

-Rinzai

Then he suddenly saw clearly that he was leading a strange life, that he was doing many things that were only a game, that he was quite cheerful and sometimes experienced pleasure, but that real life was flowing past him and did not touch him.

“We have learned much, Siddhartha.  There still remains much to learn.  We are not going in circles, we are going upwards.  The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.”

Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there in the imperfection is perfect reality.

 -Shunryu Suzuki

Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.

- Shunryu Suzuki 

No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

-Alan Watts