The message of love and compassion will travel far and wide if all who follow a spiritual path work together in harmony and mutual respect.

I think technology really increased human ability, but technology cannot produce compassion.

The purpose of all the major religious traditions is not to construct big temples on the outside, but to create temples of goodness and compassion inside, in our hearts.

To my mind, there are two things that, in life, you can do about death. Either you can choose to ignore it, in which case you may have some success in making the idea of it go away for a limited period of time, or you can confront the prospect of your own death and try to analyze it and, in so doing, try to minimize some of the inevitable suffering that it causes. Neither way can you actually overcome it.

Nowadays, we are confronted by a huge gap between rich and poor. This is not only morally wrong, but practically a mistake. It leads to the rich living in anxiety and the poor living in frustration, which has the potential to lead to more violence. We have to work to reduce this gap. It's truly unfair that some people should have so much while others go hungry.

Today we understand that the future of humanity very much depends on our planet, and that the future of the planet very much depends on humanity.

I believe the ultimate aim of all human beings is to obtain happiness and a sense of fulfillment... I have always stressed the importance of combining both the mental and material approach to achieving happiness for humankind.