How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb? The plum tree in the garden!

Disappointment is just the action of your brain readjusting itself to reality after discovering things are not the way you thought they were.

You can always improve your situation. But you do so by facing it, not by running away.

Compassion is the ability to see what needs doing right now and the willingness to do it right now.

You can't function in society if you don't involve yourself in the fictions society accepts about time. But you do so with the understanding that you're playing a game.

The truth comes when you can see that your self-image is just a convenient reference point and nothing more, and that you as you had imagined yourself do not exist.

Do what you do as well as you possibly can. That's Buddhist morality.

Truly compassionate action arises spontaneously without thought and is carried out in real action with no anticipation of reward and, indeed, no concept of a doer of that action.

Your role is to do and say the things that need to be done and said from your unique perspective.

Reality's all you've got. But here's the real secret, the real miracle: it's enough.

You won’t understand life and death until you’re ready to set aside any hope of understanding life and death and just live your life until you die.

Christians are called to set people free from the delusion of the world and from the devil’s deceit

It can't happen here" is number one on the list of famous last words.

If I ever have downtime, I'm usually sitting in my place playing video games. Or eating sandwiches somewhere, or watching sports some place.

Cultivating inner discipline is something that takes time; expecting rapid results is simply a sign of impatience.

Those who fail to learn from the brutal stompings visited on them in the past are doomed to be brutally stomped in the future.

What I'm not in the habit of doing, and I'm not going to do, is go around cap in hand pleading with players to play for their country.

In the end, rational policy is always good.

The folly of mistaking oneself for an oracle is built right into us.

It is not often given in a noisy world to come to the places of great grief and silence.

We should realize there are so many things that us together rather than the things that keep us apart.