You can't live in paradise—but you are living right here. Make this your paradise or make this your hell. The choice is entirely yours. Really.

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

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.

True nonattachment is understanding that you are fundamentally attached to everything and, through that understanding, dropping your attachment to the view that you are detached from that which you encounter. At the same time, real nonattachment means not clinging to things or people. It means dropping the idea that if you don't have this or if you can't get that, your life will be a catastrophe.

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.

If he'd [Jesus] been a little more concerned for his own safety and well being he may have toned things down a little bit and probably at best he'd be remembered as a Rabbi who said some cool things but that nobody really reads anymore. There's tons of them.

There's fantasies about what heaven is like and who Satan is and why you shouldn't masturbate or why you should vote Republican. It's funny because it's an election year and their news broadcasts are constantly talking about "Vote Republican". I think that they think they're being subtle about it, but that's definitely not the case. So I'm like, "What does this have anything to do with the nice advice you were giving about how to live your life, how to get along with your spouse etc?"