The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings, the past and the future are not as real, but rather more real than the present.

Do you have any control over being conscious? Do you know how you will?

Without birth and death, and without the perpetual transmutation of all the forms of life, the world would be static, rhythm-less, undancing, mummified.

We get such a kick out of looking forward to pleasures and rushing ahead to meet them that we can’t slow down enough to enjoy them when they come.

Life and love generate effort but effort will not generate them.

There is an ineffable mystery that underlies ourselves and the world. It is the darkness from which the light shines. When you recognize the integrity of the universe and that death is as certain as birth, then you can relax and accept that this is the way it is. There is nothing else to do.

Our normal sense of the person as a lonely island of consciousness, is a dramatic illusion based on theological imagery.