“As a monk, I have to be cautious of overindulgence; it is essential to stay regulated in our habits.”

Everyone wants to get ahead of each other, and when they cannot, they get angry.

Offering gifts and accepting gifts, opening one’s mind and inquiring in confidence, sharing food, and receiving food are the six exchanges that develop loving relationships.

Familiarity breeds contempt, I replied. When we are overly familiar with people, we forget how important they are to us and the correct way to behave with them.

The first step in selflessness is to practise it with our family.

It is strange that sword and words have the same letters.

Feeling peaceful, happy and content is not about avoiding challenges in our life, but about how we navigate through these challenges to reach the type of life we want to live.

Our association is powerful: it can uplift us or bring us down.

Always seeing the best in people and choosing to avoid their faults.

The sands of time slow for no man. Things change for better and for worse, but what we choose to perceive is up to us.

Stop and reflect on your life regularly. Pressing the pause button to practise gratitude is the way to make it a constant in your life.

It is strange that sword and words have the same letters. Even more strange is that they have the same effect if not handled properly.

The eyes are the window to the soul,

A man or a woman is known by the company they keep.

Experience is not what happens to a man, it is what a man does with what happens to him.

Behind the smiles, everyone is going through personal struggles we know nothing about.

What great men do, common men follow.

In April the sweet showers fall And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all The veins are bathed in liquor of such power As brings about the engendering of the flower.

Alcohol tells truth, but its truth is not normal.

Wine is the first weapon that devils use in attacking the young.

Note to self: no matter how bad life gets, there’s always beer.

An alcoholic father, poverty, my own juvenile diabetes, the limited English my parents spoke – although my mother has become completely bilingual since. All these things intrude on what most people think of as happiness.

We got more provisions for our whiskey than the same money, which we paid for the liquor, would have bought; so after all it proved a very profitable investment.

As adults we try to relax from the never-ending quest for reason and order by drinking a little whiskey or smoking whatever works for us, but the wisdom isn’t in the whiskey or the smoke. The wisdom is in the moments when the madness slips away and we remember the basics.

As adults we try to relax from the never-ending quest for reason and order by drinking a little whiskey or smoking whatever works for us, but the wisdom isn’t in the whiskey or the smoke. The wisdom is in the moments when the madness slips away and we remember the basics.