You must be completely awake in the present to enjoy the tea.

Only the present moment contains life.

Birth is okay and death is okay, if we know that they are only concepts in our mind. Reality transcends both birth and death.

When you climb a ladder and arrive on the sixth step and you think that is the highest, then you cannot come to the seventh. So the technique is to abandon the sixth in order for the seventh step to be possible. And this is our practice, to release our views. The practice of nonattachment to views is at the heart of the Buddhist practice of meditation.

Survival means the survival of human kind as a whole, not just a part of it. If the South cannot survive, then the North is going to crumble. If countries of Third World cannot pay their debts, you are going to suffer here in the North. If you do not take care of the Third World, your well-being is not going to last, and you will not be able to continue living in the way you have been much longer. It is leaping out at us already. You cannot leave the job to the governments or the political scientists alone. You have to do it yourself.

As a human being, you have the right to get angry; but as a practitioner, you do not have the right to stop practicing.

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.