I think the person who has had more experience of hardships can stand more firmly in the face of problems than the person who has never experienced suffering. From this angle then, some suffering can be a good lesson for life.

I don't want to be a prisoner in a palace, living in such a constricted way - too tight!

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.

When I meet people from other cultures I know that they too want happiness and do not want suffering, this allows me to see them as brothers and sisters.

If the situation was such that there was only one learned lama or genuine practitioner alive, a person whose death would cause the whole of Tibet to lose all hope of keeping its Buddhist way of life, then it is conceivable that in order to protect that one person it might be justified for one or 10 enemies to be eliminated if there was no other way.

His Holiness Pope John Paul II was a determined and deeply spiritual minded person for whom I had great respect and admiration. His experience in Poland, then a communist country, and my own difficulties with communists, gave us an immediate common ground

The foundation of the Buddha's teachings lies in compassion, and the reason for practicing the teachings is to wipe out the persistence of ego, the number-one enemy of compassion.