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.

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.

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

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 one flower blooms spring awakens everywhere

Just because a door appears closed it does not mean that it is locked - nor that it will not open with the right heart, call or touch

The struggle hurts now but will be sweet in times of retrospect.

What is a committee? A group of the unwilling picked from the unfit to do the unnecessary.

I think some people just don't know that much about comedy. It would be like a person who didn't know anything about football thinking all offensive linemen are the same.

In art, you CAN crash your plane and walk away from it

Equality is a nice idea, but it's entirely impossible to prove.

The secret to a long life is knowin' when it's time to go.

If the Internet is worth its salt, it has to help arrest the forces that promote inequality, monopoly, hypercommercialism, corruption, depoliticization and stagnation.

The key to productivity is to rotate your avoidance techniques.