Buddhism has to do with your daily life, with your suffering and with the suffering of the people around you.

The raft is used to cross the river. It isn't to be carried around on your shoulders. The finger which points at the moon isn't the moon itself.

In order to heal others, we first need to heal ourselves. And to heal ourselves, we need to know how to deal with ourselves.

What we most need to do is to hear within us the sound of the Earth crying.

Without collective awakening the catastrophe will come. I think people in the mass media, journalists, film makers and others, you can contribute to the collective awakening if you are awake and then your life will embody that awakening.

Are we treating our body kindly by the way we eat, by the way we drink, by the way we work? Are we treating ourselves with enough joy and tenderness and peace? Or are we feeding ourselves with toxins that we get from the market - the spiritual, intellectual, entertainment market?

Our smile will bring happiness to us and to those around us. Even if we spend a lot of money on gifts for everyone in our family, nothing we buy could give them as much happiness as the gift of our awareness, our smile. And this precious gift costs nothing.