Meditation is not just blissing out under a mango tree. It completely changes your brain and therefore changes what you are.

Mind training is based on the idea that two opposite mental factors cannot happen at the same time. You could go from love to hate. But you cannot, at the same time - toward the same object, the same person - want to harm and want to do good.

Meditation is about cultivating constructive emotions, like altruism, compassion.

There is a dilemma, to reconcile three time scales: in the short term, the economy; in the middle range, global well-being generally; and, in the long range, the environment.

If contemplation of other people's pain just increases distress, then I think we should see it in another way. If we don't center too much on ourselves, then [we] increase our courage and our determination to remedy the pain, not our distress. If we have unconditional compassion, then it increases our courage. So that's the difference, self-centered motivation versus altruistic motivation.

In the freshness of the present moment, past is gone, future is not yet born, and—if one remains in pure mindfulness and freedom—disturbing thoughts arise and go without leaving a trace. That is basic meditation.

The way you experience [pain] can change so much depending on your attitude.