If you have the chance to be exposed to a loving, understanding environment where the seed of compassion, loving kindness, can be watered every day, then you become a more loving person.

To take good care of yourself and to take good care of living beings and of the environment is the best way to love God.

Breathing in, there is only the present moment. Breathing out, it is a wonderful moment.

Civilisations have been destroyed many times, and this civilisation is no different. It can be destroyed. We can think of time in terms of millions of years and life will resume little by little. The cosmos operates for us very urgently, but geological time is different.

Smile, breathe and go slowly.

If we are at war with our parents, our family, our society, or our church, there is probably a war going on inside us also, so the most basic work for peace is to return to ourselves and create harmony among the elements within us - our feelings, our perceptions, and our mental states. That is why the practice of meditation, looking deeply, is so important.

There is the mud, and there is the lotus that grows out of the mud. We need the mud in order to make the lotus.