True love is not a feeling by which we are overwhelmed. It is a committed, thoughtful decision.

To heal your body, you must first heal your spirit.

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.

The major threats to our survival no longer stem from nature without but from our own human nature within. It is our carelessness, our hostilities, our selfishness and pride and willful ignorance that endanger the world.

Discipline, it has been suggested, is the means of human spiritual evolution. What provides the motive, the energy for discipline? This force I believe to be love. I define love thus: The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.

How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded.

Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live.