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.

The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.

And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.

You don't look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

Faith is a state of openness or trust.

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.

In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.

The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe.

But to me nothing - the negative, the empty - is exceedingly powerful.

We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.

The difficulty for most of us in the modern world is that the old-fashioned idea of God has become incredible or implausible.

But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.

Unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

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