Meditation gives you more inner strength and confidence, and if you don't feel vulnerable, you can put that to the service of others. So it's not just about sitting and cultivating caring mindfulness. It's building up a way of being and then using it for the service of others.

If you don't have altruism, inner strength, inner peace, attention, then it's a trauma. It makes a difficult life for you and for others.

It is in learning music that many youthful hearts learn to love.

Although the optimist may be a little giddy when foreseeing the future, telling himself that it will all work out in the end when that isn't always the case, his attitude is more fruitful since, in the hope of undertaking a hundred projects, followed up by diligent action, the optimist will end up completing fifty. Conversely, in limiting himself to undertake a mere ten, the pessimist might complete five at best and often fewer, since he'll devote little energy to a task he feels to be doomed from the start.

Peace is not weak. Standing up to a tank is harder than dropping a suicide bomb

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

You're not insensitive or indifferent, but you're also not vulnerable to the upheavals that cause emotional stress because you can buffer that... So that's the result of meditation; you could call that emotional balance.