Those who have spent ten or twenty years brushing aside the weeds looking for the way and yet have not see the buddha nature often say they are trapped by oblivion and excitement. What they don't realize is that the substance of this very oblivion and excitement is itself buddha nature.

- Kao-feng

In becoming an enlightened being, this does not destroy the living being, or take it away, or lose it; nevertheless, it does mean having shed it.

- Dogen, "Rational Zen"

The purpose of studying Buddhism is not to study Buddhism, but to study ourselves.

- Shunryu Suzuki, "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind"

Who will penetrate this earth & this realm of death with all its gods? Who will ferret out the well-taught Dhamma-saying, as the skillful flower-arranger the flower? The learner-on-the-path will penetrate this earth & this realm of death with all its gods. The learner-on-the-path will ferret out the well-taught Dhamma-saying, as the skillful flower-arranger the flower.

- Dhammapada, 4, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

In your seeing," he said, "there should be only the seeing. In your hearing, nothing but the hearing; in your smelling, tasting, and touching, nothing but smelling, tasting, and touching; in your thinking, nothing but the thought."

- Khuddaka Nikaya

Those who are afraid of all the sufferings in the world, and yet who are afraid of death, seek for nirvana. But they do not know that the world and death and nirvana are not to be separated from one another. They imagine that nirvana is to be found through annihilation of the senses, not knowing that the world of the senses is already a mirage or a miracle when it is no longer clutched at.

- Lankavatara Sutra