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.

I am a simple Buddhist monk.

I call the light and high aspects of my being spirit and the dark and heavy aspects soul. Soul is at home in the deep, shaded valleys. Heavy torpid flowers saturated with black grow there. The rivers flow like warm syrup. They empty into huge oceans of soul. Spirit is a land of high white peaks and glittering jewel-like lakes and flowers. Life is sparse and sounds travel great distances. There is soul music, soul food, and soul love... People need to climb the mountain not simple because it is there But because the soulful divinity needs to be mated with the spirit.

The root of happiness is altruism - the wish to be of service to others.

If you can cultivate wholesome mental states prior to sleep and allow them to continue right into sleep without getting distracted, then sleep itself becomes wholesome.

When young we have a vivid sense of basic values like trust and warm-heartedness, which we tend to neglect in today's competitive world as we grow up, yet from birth we all have a need for affection. The emotions we experience today have not changed much over the last few thousand years, but the interest increasing numbers of people are showing in their inner world and how their emotions work is a sign of maturity.

Humans are not machines-we are something more. We have feeling and experience. Material comforts are not sufficient to satisfy us. We need something deeper-human affection.