Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned.

Awareness of death is the very bedrock of the entire path. Until you have developed this awareness, all other practices are obstructed.

As free human beings we can use our unique intelligence to try to understand ourselves and our world. But if we are prevented from using our creative potential, we are deprived of one of the basic characteristics of a human being.

At a personal level, as a Buddhist practitioner, I deliberately visualize and think about death in my daily practice. Death is not separated from our lives. Due to my research and thoughts about death, I have some guarantee and some conviction that it will be a positive experience.

Compassion and love give meaning to our activities and makes them constructive.

I describe myself as a simple Buddhist monk. No more, no less.

We need to employ a secular approach to ethics, secular in the Indian sense of respecting all religious traditions and even the views of non-believers in an unbiased way. Secular ethics rooted in scientific findings, common experience and common sense can easily be introduced into the secular education system. If we can do that there is a real prospect of making this 21st century an era of peace and compassion.