If humanity is to survive, happiness and inner balance are crucial. Otherwise the lives of our children and their children are more likely to be unhappy, desperate and short. Material development certainly contributes to happiness - to some extent - and a comfortable way of life. But this is not sufficient. To achieve a deeper level of happiness we cannot neglect our inner development.

Whatever the intellectual quality of the education given our children, it is vital that it include elements of love and compassion, for nothing guarantees that knowledge alone will be truly useful to human beings.

Most of our troubles are due to our passionate desire for and attachment to things that we misapprehend as enduring entities.

World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion.

If we don't understand phenomena, we are more likely to do things to harm ourselves and others.

True enlightenment is nothing but the nature of one's own self being fully realized.

One country ... one ideology, one system is not sufficient. It is helpful to have a variety of different approaches ... We can then make a joint effort to solve the problems of the whole of humankind.