I believe that much of Western culture today is deep in the grip of the sort of distracted pantheism…. We are, as T.S. Eliot put it in another context, “distracted from distraction by distraction.” The remedy, the antidote, to the corrosive boredom that follows in its wake is precisely to cultivate that true attention to…

Keep your thoughts positive, because your thoughts become your words. / Keep your words positive, because your words become your behaviors. / Keep your behaviors positive, because your behaviors become your habits. / Keep your habits positive, because your habits become your values. / Keep your values positive, because your values become your destiny.

The greatest wisdom doesn’t know itself. The richest plan is not to have one.

This is perhaps the most noble aim of poetry, to attach ourselves to the world around us, to turn desire into love, to embrace, finally, what always evades us, what is beyond, but what is always there—the unspoken, the spirit, the soul.

I’ve found that there is always some beauty left—in nature, sunshine, freedom, in yourself; these can all help you.

None of us has “arrived.” We’re all still finding our paths in life.

The true practicer of austerities does not fly into nirvana. The monk who breaks the precepts does not slide into hell.

We can get dragged back into the past, which can lead to depression, or we can become anxious about the future, which can lead to fear. Conscious breathing returns us to the here and the now, where we really belong.

It’s difficult to be rigorous about whether a machine really “knows,” “thinks,” etc., because we’re hard put to define these things. We understand human mental processes only slightly better than a fish understands swimming.

Progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated, and reimagined if it is to survive.

Without losers, where would the winners be?

Never fail to know that if you are doing all the talking, you are boring somebody.

Thoughts think themselves.

Your life, all of your life, is your path to awakening. By resisting or not dealing with its challenges, you stay asleep to Reality. Pay attention to what life is trying to reveal to you. Say yes to its fierce, ruthless, and loving grace.

Did the genome of our cave dwelling predecessors contain a set or sets of genes which enable modern man to compose music of infinite complexity and write novels with profound meaning? … It looks as though early Homo was already provided with the intellectual potential which was in great excess of what was needed to…

It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you’re lucky.

Pressure is something you feel when you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.

Anything worth dying for… is certainly worth living for.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.

When we protect ourselves so we won’t feel pain, that protection becomes like armor, like armor that imprisons the softness of the heart.

It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.

When fear is finished there are no more problems to be resolved, only life to be lived.

You get what you get, and then do your best with whatever it is.

Enlightenment is the direct awareness that you are more than this puny body or limited mind. Stated negatively, it is the realization that the universe is not external to you. Positively, it is experiencing the universe as yourself.

Be as simple as you can be; you will be astonished to see how uncomplicated and happy your life can become.

The greatest danger to our future is apathy…. Can we overcome apathy? Yes, but only if we have hope.

When we start to see the invisible gifts embedded in so many facets of our lives, we can’t help but pour it forward, and that spirit of service becomes a natural expression of grateful living.