Simple practices like conscious breathing and smiling are very important. They can change our civilization.

Being rich is an obstacle to loving. When you are rich, you want to continue to be rich, and so you end up devoting all your time, all your energy, in your daily life to stay rich.

Deep listening helps us to recognize the existence of wrong perceptions in the other person and wrong perceptions in us.

Guarding knowledge is not a good way to understand. Understanding means to throw away your knowledge.

I am determined to practice deep listening. I am determined to practice loving speech.

Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, and in my way of life.

Leaves are usually looked upon as the children of the tree. Yes, they are children of the tree, born from the tree, but they are also mothers of the tree. The leaves combine raw sap, water, and minerals, with sunshine and gas, and convert it into a variegated sap that can nourish the tree. In this way, the leaves become the mother of the tree. We are all children of society, but we are also mothers. We have to nourish society. If we are uprooted from society, we can not trasform it into a more liveable place for us and our children.