"Whatsoever was going on in the name of religion before he appeared, stopped forever. He brought truth to such simplicity, to such felicity, to such grace. He spoke the way an enlightened person speaks, through his being. He was not a scholar, and he was not worried about speculation. He had no abstract ideas; he was very down-to-earth.

"And since then, Zen people have carried the flame down the ages. They speak, not because they have a philosophy to propound; they speak because they have seen something that has to be conveyed. They speak as seers, not as thinkers. They speak as masters, not as believers.

"Buddha transformed the very quality of religion. It was theology before him; after him it became anthropology. God was dethroned, man was enthroned. God is not a relevant word with Buddha, man is. He says all that is needed is hidden inside human consciousness. Man has not to look up to the heavens, he has not to ask for any grace from anywhere. He has to become a light unto himself.

"The light is there, it is the very core of your life. Just one thing has happened, you have forgotten it. Not that you have lost it, just forgotten. Remember it, because that is very fundamental to Buddha's approach.

"Life is a forgetfulness and a remembering. And that's all, and that's the whole story. One falls asleep and dreams a thousand and one things, and in the morning one wakes up and all the dreams are gone. So is life. We have fallen asleep – fallen asleep to our inner being. We have forgotten who we are; hence, the world, the samsara. The samsara means the world of ten thousand things.

"We go on rushing from one thing to another thing in search of a self. Because we have lost contact with our self, we are continuously searching for it. If you look deep down into the agony of man, this is the agony. He has forgotten who he is and is searching and asking, asking of everybody, 'Who am I?' Maybe not consciously…

"That's what you are asking when you fall in love. You are asking your beloved to tell you who you are."