That 'simple desire' to share something meant that we could enter the world of language without words, where everything is always clear and there is no danger of being misinterpreted.
I just want to live as a simple Buddhist monk, but during the last thirty years I have made many friends around the world and I want to have close contact with these people. I want to contribute to harmony and peace of mind, for less conflict. Wherever the possibililty is, I'm ready. This is my life's goal.
A corollary is that, when laws are out of touch with the people, those laws can and should be changed - from the most simple local regulations to the highest law of the land, our federal Constitution.
Zen is really extraordinarily simple as long as one doesn't try to be cute about it or beat around the bush! Zen is simply the sensation and the clear understanding ... that there is behind the multiplicity of events and creatures in this universe simply one energy -- and it appears as you, and everything is it. The practice of Zen is to understand that one energy so as to "feel it in your bones.
You must love yourself before you love another. By accepting yourself and fully being what you are, your simple presence can make others happy You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love & affection.
The supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a simple datum of experience.
Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.
You can always-always-give something, even if it's a simple act of kindness! If everyone were to give in this way and didn't scrimp on kindly words, there would be much more love and justice in the world!
But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.
The Tao never does anything, yet through it all things are done. If powerful men and women could venter themselves in it, the whole world would be transformed by itself, in its natural rhythms. People would be content with their simple, everyday lives, in harmony, and free of desire. When there is no desire, all things are at peace.