Let go of grasping

If you want to travel the Way of Buddhas and Zen masters, then expect nothing, seek nothing, and grasp nothing.
~ Dogen

The bird of paradise lands only on the hand that does not grasp.
~ Zen proverb

When you get free from certain fixed concepts of the way the world is, you find it is far more miraculous than you ever thought it was.
~ Alan Watts

Do everything with a mind that lets go. Don’t accept praise or gain or anything else. If you let go a little you will have a little peace; if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace; if you let go completely you will have complete peace.
~ Ajahn Chah

If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to.
~ Zen Proverb

Once at Cold Mountain, troubles cease -
No more tangled, hung up mind.
Idly scribbling poems on the rock cliff,
I take whatever comes, like a drifting boat.
~ Hanshan

My daily activities are not unusual,
I'm just naturally in harmony with them.
Grasping nothing, discarding nothing...
My supernatural power and marvelous activity -
Drawing water and carrying firewood.
~ Layman P'ang

It is happening right now. You are hearing. You are seeing. The functioning is going on as pure experience right now. The trouble arises because you are looking for something to grasp with the mind and say: 'This is it'! You are looking for an experience in the mind to say: Ah, that's it.' And all you do is tuck that away in your memory, and you go along on your merry way looking for something else
- Sailor Bob Adamson

The essence of generosity is letting go. Pain is always a sign that we are holding on to something - usually ourselves. When we feel unhappy, when we feel inadequate, we get stingy; we hold on tight. Generosity is an activity that loosens us up. By offering whatever we can - a dollar, a flower, a word of encouragement - we are training in letting go.
~ Pema Chodron

Do everything with a mind that lets go. If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will know complete peace and freedom. Your struggles with the world will have come to an end.
~ Ajahn Chah

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.
~ Alan Watts

The intuitive mindless nature of Zen

Using the mind to look for reality is delusion; not using the mind to look for reality is awareness. Freeing oneself from words is the way to liberation.
~ The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma

The greatest gift that you can give to this world is to make the mind still.
~ Ajahn Chah

Stop thinking, and end your problems.
~ Lao Tzu

I never get lost, because I don't know where I am going (c'est vrai lol!).
~ Ikkyu

Be still, and silent.
Know the stillness of freedom
Where there is no more striving.
~ Dhammapada

Here it is – right now. Start thinking about it and you miss it.
~ Huang po

When you are practicing Zen meditation do not try and stop your thinking. If something comes into your mind, let it come in and let it go out. It will not stay long. When you try and stop your thinking, it means you are bothered by it. Do not be bothered by anything. Leave your front door and your back door open. Allow your thoughts to come and go. Just don't serve them tea.
~ Shunryu Suzuki-roshi

The essence of meditation practice is to let go of all your expectations about meditation.
– Mingyur Rinpoche

In awareness there is no becoming, there is no end to be gained. There is silent observation without condemnation, from which comes understanding.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

The quieter you become, the more you can hear.
~ Ram Dass

You will always find an answer
in the sound of water.
~ Chuang Tzu

The instant you speak about a thing, you miss the mark.
~ Zen Proverb

The more you talk and think about it,
The further astray you wander from the truth.
Stop talking and thinking,
And there is nothing you will not be able to know.
~ Xinxin Ming

Man is a thinking reed, but great works are done when we are not calculating and thinking. "Childlikeness" has to be restored with training in the art of self-forgetfulness. When this is attained we think, yet we do not think.
~ D.T.Suzuki

Not thinking about anything is Zen.
Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down;
Everything you do is Zen.
~ Bodhi-Dharma

An ancient master said, “The mountains, the rivers, the whole earth, the entire array of phenomena are all oneself.” If you can absorb the essence of this message, there are no activities outside of meditation: you dress in meditation and eat in meditation; you walk, sit, and lie down in meditation; you perceive and cognize in meditation; you experience joy, anger, sadness, and happiness in meditation.
~ Muso Soseki

Nothing wrong (nature is everything)

No raindrop ever falls in the wrong place.
~ Zen saying

Spring flowers, autumn moon,
Summer breeze, winter snow
When the mind is free from thoughts,
Every season is just perfect!
~ Wumen Huikai ~

Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of Nature, a unique action of the total Universe.
~ Alan Watts

"You are a child of the Universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the Universe is unfolding as it should."
~ Max Ehrmann

An Innocent Misunderstanding

“Because of an innocent misunderstanding you think that you are a human being in the relative world seeking the experience of oneness, but actually you are the One expressing itself as the experience of being a human being.”
~ Adyashanti

Your Freedom

“Until the whole world is free to agree with you or disagree with you, until you have given the freedom to everyone to like you or not like you, to love you or hate you, to see things as you see them or to see things differently—until you have given the whole world its freedom—you’ll never have your freedom.”
~Adyashanti, The End of Your World: Uncensored Straight Talk on the Nature of Enlightenment

Allow all to be

Pain may arise;
Don’t worsen it with resistance.
Pleasure may arise;
Don’t diminish it by grasping.
Allow all to be as it is.
~Wu Hsin

Awaken with Byron Katie

She’s already filled to the brim; there isn’t room for a drop more. When you have what you want — when you are what you want — there’s no impulse to seek anything outside yourself. Seeking is the movement away from the awareness that your life is already complete, just as it is. Even at moments of apparent pain, there’s never anything wrong or lacking. Reality is always kind; what happens is the best thing that could happen. It can’t be anything else, and you’ll realize that very clearly if you inquire.

I have a friend whose wife fell in love with another man. He had been doing The Work for a while, and instead of going into sadness and panic, he questioned his thinking. “‘She should stay with me’ — is it true? I can’t know that. How do I react when I believe the thought? Extremely upset. Who would I be without the thought? I would love her and just wish the best for her.”

This man really wanted to know the truth. When he questioned his thinking, he found something extremely precious. “Eventually,” he said, “I was able to see it as something that should be happening, because it was. When my wife told me about it, she didn’t have to censor anything to protect me. It was amazing to hear what it was like for her, without taking any of it personally. It was the most liberating experience I ever had.”

His wife moved in with the other man, and he was fine with that, because he didn’t want her to stay if she didn’t want to. A few months later she hit a crisis point with her lover and needed someone to talk to. She went to her best friend — her husband. They calmly discussed her options. She decided to get a place of her own where she could work things out, and eventually, after many ups and downs, she went back to her husband. Through all this drama, whenever my friend found himself mentally at war with reality and experiencing pain or fear, he inquired into the thought he was believing at that moment, and returned to a calm and cheerful state of mind. He came to know for himself that the only possible problem he could have was his unquestioned thinking. His wife gave him everything he needed for his own freedom.
~Byron Katie

Conscious relating

If you are willing to look at another person's behavior toward you as a reflection of the state of their relationship with themselves rather than a statement about your value as a person, then you will over a period of time cease to react at all.
~Yogi Bhajan