God exists or God does not exist. Leave it for us. Your task is to learn how to live peacefully.

Without mutual tolerance emerging as the foundation, terrible situations like those of Tibet and Sri Lanka, Bosnia and Rwanda, can never be effectively improved.

We had a rule in Tibet that anyone proposing a new invention had to guarentee that it was beneficial, or at least harmless, for seven generations of humans before it could be adopted.

For the moment a lot of attention is given to economic concerns, and these problems at hand easily eclipse all others. But the remedies proposed for these problems all come out of outmoded ways of thinking... The remedy? Compassion. The logical feeling that we find in ourselves if we search deeply enough that has to be exercised toward all other living creatures.

I call the light and high aspects of my being spirit and the dark and heavy aspects soul. Soul is at home in the deep, shaded valleys. Heavy torpid flowers saturated with black grow there. The rivers flow like warm syrup. They empty into huge oceans of soul. Spirit is a land of high white peaks and glittering jewel-like lakes and flowers. Life is sparse and sounds travel great distances. There is soul music, soul food, and soul love... People need to climb the mountain not simple because it is there But because the soulful divinity needs to be mated with the spirit.

Just as compassion is the wish that all sentient beings be free of suffering, loving-kindness is the wish that all may enjoy happiness.

An important distinction can be made between religion and spirituality. Religion [is] concerned with faith in the claims to salvation of one faith tradition... Spirituality is concerned with qualities of the human spirit, love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony, that bring happiness both to self.