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I’m not saying the teaching isn’t valuable; I’m saying it is nothing special. It’s just as big a mystery to me as it is to you. I am just as much of an ignorant fool as you are, and just as worthy of respect.

So long as a student believes that his teacher has special powers or unique qualities, there is no room for him to wake up. He will never see that it is all happening in his own mind and nowhere else.

His great insight is his downfall bc in his zeal to break through he has fractured his whole being into fragments of an enlightened person who can never be put back together again.

He will forever see himself as far ahead of everyone else, which means that he will forever see himself as falling behind everyone else. And this sense of falling behind will always inspire him to push harder, which means that he will always be on the verge of collapse.

One cannot measure enlightenment by one’s ability to talk about enlightenment or one’s eagerness to talk about it or even one’s eloquence in talking about it: one can only measure enlightenment by the degree of freedom from self interest it brings.

We don’t need more teachers, we need more students who have learned how not to be students.

It’s no use trying to teach these men anything. They’ve learned so many things already that it has killed them.

The point isn't to get beyond suffering to some kind of freedom; it's just to recognize that suffering IS freedom, in the same way that pleasure is also freedom and pain is also freedom and joy is also freedom and sadness is also freedom and anger is also freedom and ...