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.

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.

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.

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.

It may take little time to get where you want to be, but if you pause and think for a moment, you will notice that you are no longer where you were. Do not stop—keep going.

When teaching someone a boundary, they learn less from the enforcement of the boundary, and more from the way the boundary is established.

Find then follow the path that enables you to live the life you want to live. Don't be blow by the winds of fate. Don't be a creation of circumstances.

It's the not-yet in the now, the taste of the fruit that does not-yet exist, hanging the blossom on the bough.

The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.

Gratitude is looking on the brighter side of the life, even if it means hurting your eyes.

One can know nothing of giving aught that is worthy to give unless one also knows how to take.

I've been on Prozac for 12 years and I'm off it now. I know what it feels like to be excited and sad again. I haven't felt like this in 12 years; I'm like a giddy little kid.

No, in 1968 I still wanted to be a Pop Star, and be about the music. Now, I want to be just about the music.

If you work hard the fight's easy. If you don't work hard then the fight's hard.