In daily practice, reflect on the benefits of love, compassion and kindness, then reflect on the disadvantages of anger. Such continuous contemplation, the growing appreciation of love, has the effect of reducing our inclination towards hatred and increasing our respect for love. By this means even anger can be diminished.

When you encounter some problems, if you point your finger at yourself and not at others, this gives you control over yourself and calmness in a situation, where otherwise self-control becomes problematic.

Better grounded emotionally through patience, we become stronger mentally and spiritually, and tend to be healthier physically.

From one point of view we can say that we have human bodies and are practicing the Buddha's teachings and are thus much better than insects. But we can also say that insects are innocent and free from guile, where as we often lie and misrepresent ourselves in devious ways in order to achieve our ends or better ourselves. From this perspective, we are much worse than insects.

Everybody loves to talk about calmness and peace, whether in a family, national, or international context, but without inner peace how can we make real peace? World peace through hatred and force is impossible.

It is a question of our own peace and mental stability.

Because past environmental destruction was the result of ignorance, we can easily forgive it. Today, we are better informed. Therefore, it's essential that we make an ethical examination of what we have inherited, what we are responsible for, and what we will pass on to coming generations. Ours is clearly a pivotal generation. We have global communication and yet confrontation is more common than dialogue.