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.

I really thought Reagan was going to push the button and blow us all up. It was scary. So when they did the 1998 American Godzilla film, Hollywood didn't understand what Godzilla was.

I guess what attracted me about the philosophy aspect was that it was realistic. It didn't go off into the realm of imagination land, which I find a lot of religious teachings, actually almost every religious teaching does. I keep meaning to write this up as a blog post, but lately, while driving in my car I've been listening to a religious station that comes on out of Cleveland from the Moody Bible Institute.

So I was first exposed to this guy Tim McCarthy, and he's talking about Zen, but deeper than that he was a genuine person. I thought maybe he's someone I can trust and follow this thing he's talking about all the time.

You can't function in society if you don't involve yourself in the fictions society accepts about time. But you do so with the understanding that you're playing a game.

So I'm skeptical and cynical about the whole thing and it's only if something seems to be genuine that I would pursue it. That's why I've stuck with Zen for so long and not gone on to some other path with it.

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.