“Leaving home’ to me means adopting the attitude that the pursuit of the truth is more vital than the pursuit of what society – your home – tells you is important.”

The thinking brain influences the body’s responses and it makes a neat little loop.

I mean, I can do that all day long. I can tell you the Vulcan’s are not actually devoid of emotion. That they work hard to suppress their emotions. And of course, there actually are no real Vulcan’s, though I know the ins and outs of them as fictional characters.

What attracted me to Zen was my first teacher, Tim McCarthy. He was extremely genuine. It wasn’t even really a Zen thing, that sort of came along later.

Zen practice is about not getting high on anything and in so doing getting high on absolutely everything. We then find that everything we encounter – bliss or nonbliss – possesses a tremendous depth and beauty that we usually miss.

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

Much of the hatred and fear of sexuality found in religions stems from the idea that sex is a thing of the body and that the body must be denied so that the spirit may be elevated. In Buddhism there is no notion that the body is made of inferior matter while the spirit flies free within.

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.

Real morality is based on a single criterion: right action, appropriate action, in the present moment and present situation.

I used to worry when I was a teenager, even into my twenties, after I’d heard something about schizophrenia and how people just suddenly become schizophrenic that I was insane.

Everything you have, whether it’s money or stuff, is an obligation. It is as much your duty to care for and nurture any object you own as it would be if that object were your child. All possessions come with responsibilities. More possessions equals greater responsibility.

It’s sort of another innovation, probably a good innovation, of Western culture to separate the ideas between science and philosophy, but it’s important to remember they weren’t always separate realms of inquiry.

Suffering occurs when your ideas about how things ought to be don’t match how they really are.

Faith keeps you going, but doubt keeps you from going off the deep end.

I was very attracted to the way that Zen did not go into the imagination land. And now I’ve forgotten what your first question was and how we were going to tie this together.

That does not mean that we must forego just and fair criticism, or refrain from opposition to policies which are debatable or which do not command our approval.

I look back on my life like everybody does but not just career. I mean I look back on my life as a whole, so I don’t think that I dwell there or anything and in terms of work I hope that there is a lot in front of me.

The history of your world is filled with the voice of the victor, the voice of power, although it was not always a voice of sanity, by any means.

To act without rapacity, to use knowledge with wisdom, to respect interdependence, to operate without hubris and greed are not simply moral imperatives. They are an accurate scientific description of the means of survival.

All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant.

When a woman says, ‘I don’t wish to mention any names’, it means it ain’t necessary to mention any names.

I’m an artist who works with pictures and words. Sometimes that stuff ends up in different kinds of sites and contexts which determine what it means and looks like.

My friend Quincy Jones says we won our first Grammys together in 1963. I have no recollection. I don’t even remember the room. When he showed me the picture, I remembered what I wore. But it’s like awards don’t mean anything.