Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

Men have no better guidance than examples and facts proved by experience.

What you really value is what you miss, not what you have.

I wanted to be born at the farthest limit of the world. I'll explore it, I said to myself, biting big chunks from it. And when I want, I'll go straight to the core. This is the way of the world I thought in my innocence, round and around the layers of peel until the taste becomes certain.

If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. ... If you want to know the theory7 and methods of revolution, you must take part in the revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.

These people are like ... a frog living in a well, who has never seen the outside world. He knows only his well, so he will not believe that there is such a thing as the world. Likewise, people talk so much about the world because they have not known the joy of God.

Facts of experience are valued in Zen more than representations, symbols, and concepts-that is to say, substance is everything in Zen and form nothing.

Do not believe a thing because you read it in a book! Do not believe a thing because another has said it so! Find out the truth for yourself.