Buddhism, I think, is probably facing the single most difficult transition from one historical epoch to another, which is really the transition to modernity.

The origin of the conflict, frustration, and anxiety we experience does not lie in the nature of the world itself but in our distorted conceptions of the world.

Consciousness is an emergent, contingent, and impermanent phenomenon. It has no magical capacity to break free from the field of events out of which it springs.

While 'Buddhism' suggests another belief system, 'dharma practice' suggests a course of action. The four ennobling truths are not propositions to believe; they are challenges to act.

What is it that makes a person insist passionately on the existence of metaphysical realities that can be neither demonstrated nor refuted? (176)

In taking life for granted, we fail to notice it.

The problem with certainty is that it is static; it can do little but endlessly reassert itself. Uncertainty, by contrast, is full of unknowns, possibilities, and risks.

The greatest threat to compassion is the temptation to succumb to fantasies of moral superiority.

To embrace suffering culminates in greater empathy, the capacity to feel what it is like for the other to suffer, which is the ground for unsentimental compassion and love.

This body is fragile. It is just flesh. Listen to the heartbeat. Life depends on the pumping of a muscle.

We cannot choose whether to engage with the world, only how to.

When his dead father touched his hand, Athson almost dropped the arrow.

I will find comfort in the rhythm of the sea.

I've been in these tabloids for 14 years now, and at some point you just become a Zen master of it all

Change begets change.

In the window, I fantasize... about providing grown-ups and children alike with the greatest gift of all: insight.

Since the hour when Christ despoiled Hades, men have danced in triumph over death.

...discussing cultural relativism with cultural relativists is like playing tennis with some guy who says, "Your ace is just a social construct.

....it cannot be called ingenuity to kill one's fellow citizens, to betray friends, to be without faith, without mercy, without religion; by these means one can aquire power but not glory.

I am loaded down to the guards with educational, benevolent, and other miscellaneous public work, I must not attempt to do more. I cannot without neglecting imperative duties.

I was really into writing short fiction and also photography when I was a kid.