How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded! Community requires the ability to expose our wounds and weaknesses to our fellow creatures. It also requires the ability to be affected by the wounds of others... But even more important is the love that arises among us when we share, both ways, our woundedness.

Evil people hate the light because it reveals themselves to themselves. ... They will destroy the light, the goodness, the love in order to avoid the pain of self-awareness. ... [E]vil is laziness carried to its ultimate, extraordinary extreme.

The best decision-makers are those who are willing to suffer the most over their decisions but still retain their ability to be decisive.

There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability; there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community.

If you wish to discern either the presence or absence of integrity, you need to ask only one question. What is missing? Has anything been left out?

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.

I have said I have met Satan, and this is true. But it is not tangible. It no more has horns, hooves and a forked tail than God has a long white beard. Even the name, Satan, is just a name we have given to something basically nameless.