To be free people we must assume total responsibility for ourselves, but in doing so must possess the capacity to reject responsibility that is not truly ours. To be organized and efficient, to live wisely, we must daily delay gratification and keep an eye on the future; yet to live joyously we must also possess the capacity, when it is not destructive, to live in the present and act spontaneously. In other words, discipline itself must be disciplined. The type of discipline required to discipline discipline is what I call balancing.

Listening well is an exercise of attention and by necessity hard work. It is because they do not realize this or because they are not willing to do the work that most people do not listen well.

Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the making of action in spite of fear.

But for the first time, I had a religious identity. I had come home. And so I called myself a Zen Buddhist at the age of 18.

Consciousness is the foundation of all thinking; and thinking is the foundation of all consciousness.

The will to grow is, in essence, the same phenomenon as love. Genuinely loving people are, by definition, growing people.

Falling in love is not an extension of one's limits or boundaries; it is a partial and temporary collapse of them.