“I think of compassion as the fundamental religious experience and, unless that is there, you have nothing.”

Let the world be as it is and learn to rock with the waves.

The purpose of the journey is compassion. When you have come past the pairs of opposites, you have reached compassion.

Vegetarians are people who cannot hear tomatos screaming.

Change the focus of the eye. When you have done that, then the end of the world as you formerly knew it will have occurred, and you will experience the radiance of the divine presence everywhere, here and now.

Suddenly you’re ripped into being alive. And life is pain, and life is suffering, and life is horror, but my god you’re alive and its spectacular.

You’ve got to say yes to this miracle of life as it is, not on condition that it follow your rules.

The problem of making the inner meet the outer of today is, of course, the function of the artist.

If you follow your bliss…the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.

You don’t ask what a dance means. You enjoy it. You don’t ask what the world means. You enjoy it. You don’t ask what you mean. You enjoy it.

When we talk about settling the world’s problems, we’re barking up the wrong tree. The world is perfect. It’s a mess. It has always been a mess. We’re not going to change it. Our job is to straighten out our own lives.

It is not society which is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse.

It is within you that the divine lives.

All we really want to do is dance.

Eternity is not future or past. Eternity is a dimension of now.

At the darkest moment comes the light.

All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you.

I give a portion of my time to helping others. It is good for my own health.

Tomorrow’s leaders will not lead dictating from the front, nor pushing from the back. They will lead from the centre – from the heart.

We can’t fight darkness with darkness. We have to find compassion, and embrace the darkness inside of us in order to understand it and, ultimately, to transcend it.

Compassion allows us to understand that, as citizens of the planet, we’re all in this together and that in order to ensure our survival we must hold and cultivate a new and larger vision of what’s possible for ourselves and for the human race as a whole.

Each aspect within us needs understanding and compassion. If we are unwilling to give it to ourselves how can we expect the world to give it to us?

All I want is the same thing you want. To have a nation with a government that is as good and honest and decent and competent and compassionate and as filled with love as are the American people.

we unwittingly project onto God our own attitudes and feelings toward ourselves… But we cannot assume that He feels about us the way we feel about ourselves — unless we love ourselves compassionately, intensely, and freely.

When you find yourself in a position to help someone, be happy because Allah is answering that person’s prayer through you.