“How we live now can cost us our entire future.”

The key to finding a happy balance in modern lives is simplicity.

What should we “do” with the mind in meditation? Nothing. Just leave it, simply, as it is.

{While meditating} I sit quietly and rest in the nature of mind; I don’t question or doubt whether I am in the “correct” state or not.

Real devotion is an unbroken receptivity to the truth

Samsara is the mind turned outwardly, lost in its projections. Nirvana is the mind turned inwardly, recognizing its true nature.

Real devotion is an unbroken receptivity to the truth. Real devotion is rooted in an awed and reverent gratitude, but one that is lucid, grounded, and intelligent.

True spirituality is to be aware that if we are interdependent with everything and everyone else, even our smallest, least significant thought, word and action have real consequences throughout the universe.

Quoting Dudjom Rinpoche on the buddha-nature: No words can describe it No example can point to it Samsara does not make it worse Nirvana does not make it better It has never been born It has never ceased.

Once an old woman came to Buddha and asked him how to meditate. He told her to remain aware of every movement of her hands as she drew the water from the well, knowing that if she did, she would soon find herself in that state of alert and spacious calm that is meditation.

This is the real and urgent reason why we must prepare now to meet death wisely, to transform our karmic future, and to avoid the tragedy of falling into delusion again and again and repeating the painful round of birth and death.

…we and all sentient beings fundamentally have the buddha nature as our innermost essence. . . .

At every moment in our lives we need compassion, but what more urgent moment could there be than when we are dying?

Saints and mystics throughout history have adorned their realisations with different names and given them different faces and interpretations, but what they are all fundamentally experiencing is the essential nature of the mind.

We are actually educated into believing that nothing is real beyond what we can perceive with our ordinary senses.

There is no armor like perseverance.

Even though the meditator may leave the meditation, the meditation will not leave the meditator.

The entire lower world was created in the likeness of the higher world. All that exists in the higher world appears like an image in this lower world; yet all this is but One.

I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.

A man of strong opinions is one thing. But a man whose strong opinions depend entirely on how he is feeling in that instant is a disastrous thing in a city of 10 million people just trying to muddle through.

I learned more about acting from George Stevens in a few months than I had in my entire life up until then

That’s the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever.

I read somewhere that some people believe that the entire universe is a matrix of living thought. And I said, “Man, if that’s not a definition of God, I don’t know what is.

There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world.

I hear entire symphonies, oratorios, in my head, but I can’t write a note.