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

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.

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.

As long as we think our lives are not good enough (materially), we will not have happiness. As soon as we realize our lives are good enough, happiness immediately appears. That is the practice of contentment.

I do many kinds of work, and if you forbid me from binding books, from gardening, from writing poetry, from practicing walking meditation, from teaching children, I will be very unhappy. To me, work is pleasant. Pleasant or unpleaseant depends on our way of looking.

Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible.

Many people are alive but don't touch the miracle of being alive.