"The heart is open; there are no safety measures, no defenses. Your mind may interpret me according to your prejudices – then it need not be disturbed – but your heart will simply take me in without any interpretation on its own part. She has chosen the more dangerous path, but the more sincere, more authentic and the most shortcut.

"So don't disturb her and force her to learn the language. Language has to be forgotten. You have to forget, you have to unlearn all that you know. In the space of unlearning your innocence starts growing. I speak just to help you to understand my silent gaps. But what I am really doing is in the silences – not through the words, but between the words. Words are just toys that I am giving to your mind to play with. Silence is really the sword that penetrates directly into your heart; it brings transformation.

"Mind is very reluctant to change, very stubborn in changing. It has so much investment in its past that it is almost blind to the future possibilities. The heart has no past, it has only the present and an opening into the future. It longs for the unknown, for the mysterious. It is not satisfied with the mundane, it is not satisfied with money or power, or prestige. Its longing is for something beyond the ordinary, beyond ambitions, because only beyond ambitions is the land of the lotus paradise.

"Your Japanese girlfriend has a deeper understanding than you have. In fact, it is a strange coincidence that you are Chinese.

"The whole philosophy of meditation first reached China from India, but China already had its own ideas. Confucius was a very mundane philosopher, and he was the dominant figure in China, the most respected person – because he was the most moralistic, puritan. He created all kinds of disciplines for the development of the personality. And meditation is a demolishing of the personality.

"There was a great clash between meditation and Confucian philosophy, which was predominant in China. It was a long struggle. There was a small stream of Tao – Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu – but it was a very small stream."