If through practice of insight you develop a sense of ease, then time has no relevance. If you're miserable, time does matter. It's so unbearable, so enormous you want to get out of it as soon as possible.

Someone else's action should not determine your response.

Only through the development of mutual respect, and in a spirit of truth, can friendship come about. By these means it is possible to move human minds, but never by force.

There is a common perception that compassion is, if not actually an impediment, at least irrelevant to professional life. Personally, I would argue that not only is it relevant, but that when compassion is lacking, our activities are in danger of becoming destructive. This is because when we ignore the question of the impact our actions have on others' well-being, inevitably we end up hurting them.

I want to say, without hesitation, the purpose of our life is happiness.

From a certain point of view our real enemy, the true troublemaker, is inside.

I hope that at this moment you are thinking of yourself as a human being rather than as an American, Asian, European, African, or member of any particular country. These loyalties are secondary.