Our most valuable teachers are our enemies.While our friends can help us in many ways, only our enemies can provide us with the challenge we need to develop tolerance, patience, and compassionthree virtues essential for building character, developing peace of mind, and bringing us true happiness.

Where there is a mind, there are feelings such as pain, pleasure, and joy. No sentient being wants pain: all wants happiness instead.

Be gentle with the earth.

Genuine peace is based on inner peace, because you cannot build peace on the basis of anger

Anger or hatred is like a fisherman's hook. It is very important for us to ensure that we are not caught by it.

One thing I want to make clear, as far as my own rebirth is concerned, the final authority is myself and no one else, and obviously not China's Communists.

If we had to accept the idea of an independent creator, the explanations given in [several Buddhist texts] which completely refutes the existence per se of all phenomena, would be negated.